The Paper Doll In Residence...

To celebrate Victorienne's impending debut at
The Gossamer Tearoom shop on Etsy,
a short film:

Coming soon...

...banners to brighten any space you hang them...

...huggable paper dolls...

...purple kittens...

...lovable brooches...

Wishing you all a Happy Springtime Sunday!

Busy-ness at The Tearoom...

There are so many things going on here in the world of The Tearoom!

First, a reminder that you only have four days left to sign up to participate in the postcard swap for National Postcard Week!  The deadline to sign up is Friday, the 26th and you can get more information about the swap here.

Next, I have been busy adding new digital collage sheets in Velvet Revived:

This is my first sheet of inchies, inspired by my love of springtime and my wish that it would finally come to The Land of The Tearoom, so that we would stop having to send so much money to The Land of the Electric Company in order to stay warm!!

This is the sheet I made to share the fun I had making my logo and avatar for National Postcard Week! These letters I scanned from the fronts of some of the vintage postcard folders I have been collecting since I was very young and putting them together to form words is was just too much fun!

And this is the most recent sheet I have made shows our darling Victorienne in rompers depicting her summer vacation (lots of thinking ahead to summer here!!).

All are available in Velvet Revived on Etsy.

And what is our Princess of the Dimples up to here?  It's a secret for now, but soon, all will be revealed!

The Written Word...

Something different from me this week in the way of collages...

This is my collage for the collage challenge at The Three Muses this week.  The prompt was "The Written Word".  I decided to make a cut-and-paste work this week instead of a digital one.  I used strips from old book pages I have and pages from a shorthand magazine my mother collected.  I stained torn pieces of old map pages with purple chalk ink (and my favorite tool for staining, my finger!!) and then rubber stamped this inspirational quote from Franz Kafka with three different alphabet stamp sets I have.

I'd like to thank Kirsi of the blog Itkupilli in The City of Angels for her inspiration for this piece.  She posted this quote recently and when I read it, it planted the seed in my mind for this piece!  Thank you! Her creativity continues to amaze and inspire me!

A Word (or Two) Regarding....

Dear Friends of The Tearoom,
Most people who follow me here know I have a love of vintage items of many kinds.  But, of all the items that I have sold and bought, some of my very favorites are ephemera, especially post cards.

I was so fortunate to have inherited the postcard collections of my mother, my grandmother and great grandmother.  I have scanned much of it and transformed a great deal of it into the digital collage sheets I now sell at my shop Velvet Revived on Etsy.  But my own collection dates back to one that I began when I was in grade school!  My parents and I used to frequent a flea market where I grew up in Casper, Wyoming.  I just loved the old linen-finish postcards!  I love the colors and it seems to me that there are combinations and shades of colors used in them that don't seem to be used together anymore.

Last year, I started a new collection of postcards:  brightly colored French photographic postcards from the 1910's and 1920's.  Now, I use them, along with the vintage floral postcards I have inherited (and some I have bought from Etsy) in the digital collage sheet designs and other projects.

This weekend, I was very excited to have been invited to join the Pacific Postcard Team on Etsy!!  The team captain is Colleen, and it is from her that I learned about something very fun!  May 5th to May 11th is National Post Card Week, where people who appreciate postcards of all kinds celebrate their love of postcards by participating in post card swaps!  Colleen is hosting one as well and you don't have to be a member of her postcard team or even be registered on Etsy to participate.  If you are interested, please contact her, she will take your mailing information (only for use in the swap and no other purpose) and she will be sending each of us a list of all of the addresses of the participants.  Then, you either make or buy (or use vintage postcards you'd like to trade) postcards and send one to each of the participants and you will receive them in return!  Fun!!

I will be participating and am hatching plans to create some extra-fun rubber stamp postcards!!

You can learn more about National Post Card Week and the postcard swap on her blog Butterfly in the Attic.

Won't you please consider playing along?

Victorienne's New Dresses...

What a lucky little girl Victorienne is!  Here she is in her latest collections of adorable rompers!  You can see the rest of these collections by viewing the newest digital collage sheets from Velvet Revived.

Here, she is so happy wearing the myriad of colors found in a rose garden!

And here, she is wearing her favorite color, which also happens to be mine: Purple!

And,

very soon,

Victorienne will make her debut

at

The Gossamer Tearoom shop on Etsy...!

The Airship Impatience....

(please click for larger image)

This, Dear Friends, is The Airship Impatience, piloted by our own Violette!  She is so dear!  After hearing me complain endlessly about how long spring is taking to get here, she has gone to get me spring flowers!  I don't know where she has gone to get them, but I am grateful!  And, as is always the way just when you think something will never happen, of course, it does!  Today, in The Land of The Tearoom, it has finally been warm enough to feel like springtime!  Soon enough, I will be be planting little flowers in the pots on our porch in my favorite pair of barefeet!

(This is actually my submission for the collage challenge at The Three Muses this week.  The prompt was "Transport".  The background and airship of my collage come from Marsha of Tumblefish Studio's newest sheets!)

Another Twinkling Night in Paris...

Having fun, doing collages today...

Here is my entry for the collage challenge on Collage Obsession.  The prompt this week is "Cities".  Of course I can't miss a chance to create yet another collage having to do with my favorite city!  The background is from Marsha of Tumblefish Studio's brand-new kits inspired by the film-maker Georges Méliés.  You might remember him if you saw the movie "Hugo" or have seen his famous film from 1902 "A Trip to the Moon". The scene from Paris is from my private collection of vintage postcards of Paris.