Easter Fun

Putting together Easter Goodies made easy and adorable with help from generous freebies...

Adorable Tags from Tricia-Rennea Illustrator

Scrapbook page from Aussie Scrap Designs

Decorate your own basket from CancerMoon Creations

Artsyfartsy Queen's Vintage Easter Images

Bunny Hand Embroidery Pattern at Urban Threads

Force your own paper tulips tutorial at Cheeky Magpie

Keep it Simple

Keep it Simple....Keep it Simple....

Having the constant inclination to make things more difficult, confusing or just cluttered than they need to be, I try to keep the "keep it simple" mantra in my brain.  

Simplifying my surroundings has been a goal for the new year.  In that vain, I ran across this wonderful poster today.  Readymade Magazine asked five artists to "reimagine" the populist posters the government commissioned from artists during the Great Depression, and to design some modern posters for our current time.   I absolutely love the one above, designed by Nick Dewar. It is available for download in pdf form HERE.

Here are 4 other wonderful posters available for download. 

I think that they are all pretty terrific!

Appreciation ~ Kate Greenaway

Language of Flowers, London,
Routledge, 1884. Engraved and
colour printed by Edmund Evans.

Kate Greenaway was an illustrator of children's books in the Victorian era.  Her work depicted children as dreamy little figures who play amid the English countryside, dressed in frilly smocks, mob caps and sunbonnets.  I own several books with drawings by Kate Greenaway, including the one above, Language of Flowers.   

This morning I was pleasantly surprised when the weekly Dover Publications design sampler had some downloads from the book Kate Greenaway Illustrations CD-ROM and Book (Dover Electronic Clip Art).  If you haven't signed up for this weekly download, you can do it RIGHT HERE.  Each week you get an email with a variety of downloads from different publications.  The offerings are always great, and they are also perfect for use in many different crafts like Atcs, scrapbooks, and homemade postcards.  Here are the samples from Kate Greenaway that are offered this week:

I think they are just wonderful!

Vintage Valentines

Who doesn't like vintage valentines?  I just finished doing up some vintage valentine ATC's for a swapbot swap. There are unlimited resources on the Internet for vintage inspiration and lots of freebies.

The Frugal Crafter has this sheet of valentine kewpies for downloading here.  She made lovely little lollipop covers with them. 

Altered Stuff has a wonderful collage sheet of vintage valentines that can be downloaded in pdf or jpg format. 

Scrappiles has digital scrapbooking freebies including a sheet of cute vintage cut-outs.

If you want to send vintage ecards, West Virginia University Library has put together a selection of valentine cards and postcards.    This is a sample from their collection:

The valentines that I used fort my ATC's were from Zwani graphics.  This site has html code ready to cut and paste so that you can add a wonderful vintage valentine to your site!

My ATC looked like this

Snow Day - Not

It was supposed to snow 4 inches today.  We were really looking forward to a good old fashioned snow day, since we haven't had one in several seasons.  Needless to say, it flurried big white yummy flakes all day which accumulated to NOTHING!  It is just cold, wet and muddy! Ugh, I hate global warming!  

As a result, I got nothing done today.  I kept anticipating that the snow would actually amount to something, and school would be dismissed early, and as a result, I was distracted and nonproductive.  I did have to take my mother-in-law to the doctor, where I ran into my hair stylist.  It was a bit awkward - sort of like seeing your GYN doctor at a cocktail party - trying to make small talk in an atmosphere that is just completely out of context.  She wasn't all made up in her hair stylist perfect hair and makeup garb, and my hair was curling and frizzing up the wrong way.  I wondered what she was thinking about styling (or lack thereof).  Thankfully, I had washed my hair this morning, so at least it was clean!  I guess I need to make an appointment soon.  

The best thing about the day, was that I received some comments and emails from my swapping partners on the BLOG swap at swapbot.  I feel like my blog is getting getting resuscitated and that it might actually live again!  It is certainly fun to be introduced to some new blogging friends - Yarnigras, This Handmade Life, and My Lil Toy Haven - who share similar interests to me.  Be sure to check out these blogs!  I also found a blog that offers free vintage clipart, The Vintage Moth.   Not only was there wonderful clipart for the taking, but the blog is full of great links to other resources.  I was so taken I added a link on my sidebar!  This is definitely worth a look!