Under Prairie Starlight...

(Click to see image larger.)

shhhh.....

We must be very quiet.

We are witnessing something very rare.

Under the light of a million stars,

Out on the prairie,

The jackalopes and their queen converge nightly.

She lovingly guides them on the travels

Over sagebrush and ground-cover cacti

She even gives a little hug to those that require extra encouragement

The jackalopes are rarely seen

(Some say they don't exist, but I don't believe it.)

But this is the first time the Queen has been captured in an image.

shhhhh...

Don't let them notice we are here...

We will just sit here counting the un-countable numbers

of stars and watch in wonder...

For those who have not seen them before, jackalopes are purported to be mythical creatures, a cross between an antelope and a jack rabbit.  They have become a symbol of popular culture in places like where I grew up in Wyoming.  First-time visitors to the area are convincingly encouraged to keep looking out for them during their travels across the prairie!  

(This is my submission for the Take a Word Collage Challenge.  The images I used in this collage are from the following sources:  Tumble Fish Studios, The Graphics Fairy and my own personal collection.)

Victorienne and The Party Chickens. . .

(Click to see the image larger.)

What a lovely spring day it is, the perfect day for an outing!  In the Land of the Tearoom, we are surrounded by rapidly-melting mountains of snow, but Little Victorienne is very happy to be someplace more spring-like and to finally be able to go outside without her snowsuit on!  Today, she pays a visit to The Farm of The Party Chickens!  They all rush to greet her in their finest finery and she is stepping ever-so gingerly amongst them!  She knows in their excitement they are not being careful of her, so she must be careful of them!  One would not usually wear white shoes to go visit at a farm, but her shoes are made of rubber and therefore, easily washed when she returns from the farm!

(This is my submission for the collage challenge at Sunday Postcard Art!  The prompt today was "Down on the Farm.")

The Age of Steam

(Please click for a larger image.)

Above is a rarely-seen image of a cotton-candy factory from The Age of Steam.  The process has been lost now, but there was a time when clouds of cotton-candy would rise from smoke stacks, hard-working little bluebirds with nets would capture it, where it would be held until it was to be sent to carnivals and circuses everywhere.  The Violet Cotton Candy Factory pictured here was one of the most famous makers of this favorite confection.  As you can see here, there was a large cage, filled with the delicious pink fluff, left where passers-by could come and have free samples!

(This is my submission for The Three Muses Collage Challenge this week.  Images used in this collage came from Charmed Memory Collage and Tumble Fish Studios.  The decayed effect was a layer I made from an image of a decayed daguerreotype I found here.  And I'd like to thank my husband Mr. V for the inspiration!  When I read the prompt out loud to him, he said to me, "Why not a cotton candy factory?"  Good job, sweet heart!)

Welcome Back to The Tearoom!

Dearest Friends of The Tearoom,
It has been such a long time since we visited here over a cup of tea here in the Tearoom! Today, I bring you back to show you how we have decorated with the new bunting sets I have created in Velvet Revived, here in our Imaginary Tearoom of the Aether!

Today is a good day for celebrating, as it is the day of the Tuesday Linky Party at Butterfly in the Attic!  Each Tuesday, she hosts a great party focusing on vintage postcards or artwork made from postcards in some way!  It's become one of my favorite days of the week!  Dear Colleen has once again featured one of my sheets (Thank you so much!) and it is just through pure coincidence that it happens to be one of the sheets I have drawn on for inspiration for my new line of buntings as well!  My French Tea Party Digital Collage Sheet is the one she has most kindly featured today:

Since this collage sheet, the matching Printable Invitation, my Alice in Wonderland Collage Sheet and matching Mad Tea Party Printable Invitation were some of my favorite projects to work on (and some of my most popular sellers), I decided to make Printable Buntings to match!  Here, they are, hung over one of the couches in The Tearoom!

The Mad Tea Party Bunting

Click here to see it in Velvet Revived

The Tea in Paris Bunting

Click here to see it in Velvet Revived

I hope you will enjoy a cup of tea with us today

(perhaps a cup of intensely floral Jardin de Pierre by Pierre Hermé

to encourage spring to finally visit those of us still surrounded

by mountains of snow?)

And won't you please be so kind as

to visit the Linky Party at Butterfly in the Attic as well?

Wishing for Springtime...

This is my submission for the collage challenge at The Three Muses.  The prompt this week was Spring.  My inspiration for this collage were the beautiful early Springtimes I experienced while living in Washington, DC.  Our neighborhood was mainly comprised of beautiful brownstones with tiny jewel box gardens in front.  On our street, older apartment buildings had these same gardens in front.  Up the street from us, in the garden of a very grand building, called most grandly The Chateau Thierry, grew mini daffodils, crocus and two shades of deepest purple mini iris.  I looked for these flowers each time I walked past on my way to the grocery store on the corner.  Many times, they appeared as early as February.  They were quickly followed by tulips, hyacinths, ornamental white pear trees, cherry blossoms, crab apple.  I miss my Washington springtimes of the past with all my heart.

A Happy Day!

Good Morning to you, Dear Friends,
I'm happy the sun is shining because it is a very special day!  It is the birthday of Mr. V, my husband and best friend!  Happy Birthday, My Love!

Here he was in an earlier time, apparently making a phone call!

Happy Tuesday!

Good Day to you, Dearest Friends of The Tearoom!
Even though it is still cold and the mountains of snow outside our windows are nearly high enough to be Peeping Toms (!), the sun is shining today and it is warm and cheery here.  Spring comes to us slowly here, but in our hearts, we are already surrounded by spring green and blooming flowers!

And, because it is once again Tuesday, I am once again participating in the Linky Party at Butterfly in the Attic (Colleen has once again featured my Pastel Easter collage sheet from Velvet Revived!  Thank you, once again, Dear Colleen!).  In the spirit of springtime, I have been working on this lilac alphabet sheet and have finally finished it and listed it in Velvet Revived:

Lilac Alphabet Digital Collage Sheet Set

And, because there is no place we would rather spend our springtime than Paris, I am featuring my French Tea Party Collage Sheet and Paris Tea Party Printable Invitation in the Linky Party as well!

French Tea Party Digital Collage Sheet Set

Paris Tea Party Printable Invitation

Wishing you all a lovely Tuesday!

Saturday Film Festival at The Tearoom. . .

As we sit in the dark today, bits of blue buttercream still on our noses from yesterday, we sip our Earl Grey and watch this delightful little video, the first in our new Saturday Film Festival here at The Gosssamer Tearoom!  As our faces are lit by flickering movielight, I am reminded of Saturdays as a child, sitting cross-legged on the gymnasium floor of my grade school, watching movies after having paid a dime (and one more as well, as I was treating my friend!).  I think we were given boxes of milk to drink, but we are now grown-up aesthetes and this is The Tearoom, so buttercream pastries and steaming tea are our ideas of the perfect movie-watching treat!

From the Gustave Doré exhibit at the Musée D'Orsay in Paris

This has also brought to our attention the lovely

music from this French group, Ödland

And, in very exciting news,my digital collage "Flying Fish Tours"
was selected as a sample of the work submitted at
Sunday Postcard Art!!
Thank you to my new friends there!

A Cooking Lesson from The Grand Budapest Hotel...

As I chatted about here last week, here at The Tearoom, we can't wait to see the new movie Grand Budapest Hotel.  And the thing that we will be very interested in seeing is the role a pastry called the Courtesan au Chocolat will play!  Now, a featurette has been released which not only gives the recipe, but shows you how they are made!  And so, may I present, a cooking lesson in making this pastry at home!

Zero and Agatha of The Grand Budapest Hotel

Zetti. . .

I hadn't yet done any of my collages in a Zetti style, but decided to give it a try (I'm not sure what I do is so far away from this zany style anyway!)  So, here is my submission today for Three Muses Collage Challenge:

(Please click to see larger.)

This little girl and her dollies have had such a fun time today, 

dressing up just as wacky as possible!

Most of the images in my collage today came from 

Marsha of Tumble Fish Studios.

The faces of the dolls are my own dear dollies!

We Do So Love Our Parties...

Dearest Friends,
If you have spent even just a small amount of time here at The Tearoom, you know how much I do love parties!!  Anytime we are here, gathered around a cup of tea once again, in the company of friends, is a lovely time!  So, it makes me so happy to once again this week, participate in the Linky Party at Butterfly in The Attic!  My friend Colleen has honored me by once again featuring one of my digital collage sheets from Velvet Revived, Pastel Easter, on her blog!  That's so sweet of you, Colleen and once again, I do thank you!

In the meanwhile, we are still gearing up for Easter and Springtime (in spite of it snowing again today!).  Oh well!  Isn't the point of Our Little Tearoom of The Imagination that we should have a place to go for refuge from Real Life?  I know it is my place to go when I don't want to look at life as it really is and I do hope you will feel free to visit here in the same spirit!

Our Easter and Springtime preparations today continue by creating a whole new set of pretty spring outfits for our Dear Victorienne!  She is wearing lots of sweet little dresses, perfect for chasing bunnies and chicks and picking flowers!

Victorienne's Easter Parade, new on Velvet Revived

Wishing All Dear Friends of The Tearoom a Most Beautiful Day!!

Blackbird...

My submission for the collage challenge this week at Take A Word:

Mr. Blackbird is waiting for you to come to tea with him.

He has left a cup for you

and

a blackberry on a plate.

Because in bird-world, blackberries are like

the most beautiful of pastries to us.

He does so hope you will join him!

Images used in my collage today:

The Graphics Fairy

Asunder Ephemera 

(on Etsy, now sadly closed)

Mr. Blackbird is from Wikipedia

Flying Fish . . .

Today, I am participating for the first time in the collage challenge at Sunday Postcard Art!  The host this week is the amazing Marsha of Tumble Fish Studios!  I admire her work so much!  I just love the way she designs collages of cute little girls holding fishes like they were teddy bears!!!  So, it was no surprise to learn that her prompt for the challenge was "Fish"!  I have to say that I don't think I have ever used fish in one of my collages before, so thank you, Marsha, for getting me to stretch creatively for this challenge! Here's my submission:

Once again, Our Paperdoll Daughter
Victorienne goes on an adventure!

The Flying Fish take her on a tour of Paris at night!

How exciting!

Images used in my collage from the following:

Tumble Fish Studios

Holliewood Studios

My personal collection

More Sweets for The Sweet...

All of the talk of sweets yesterday has made me decide that today is a very good day to show you something new I have made for The Gossamer Tearoom Etsy shop!

Les Blancmanges de Fantasie Print

I own a large collection of rubber stamps.  The one of this molded dessert is only one of them.  Of course there is nothing too fancy about that most famous molded dessert that begins with the letter "J".  But a Blancmange, now that's something else!  Although it started out as a food to serve to invalids, I'm having a lot more fun than that with it here!  I enjoyed coloring the little desserts with different pigment and metallic stamping inks and cotton swabs (one of my favorite artists tools)!  This print includes typical flavors for desserts of this type and ones that are more... improbable.  It's part of my new line of hand-stamped prints I'm doing.

And here's another:

Dickens Quote Print

"An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself." I just love this quote from Charles Dickens!  I find it inspirational, yet mysterious as well!  So, this is the second in a series of hand-stamped quote prints I am making available for sale in The Gossamer Tearoom Shop on Etsy.    Keep watching for more!  I'm having fun making them!

And, by the way, what are your favorite quotes?  Would you like to see them done in this hand-stamped format?  Don't hesitate to let me know!  I love doing custom orders!

Be sure and stop by my friend Colleen's blog Butterfly in the Attic because today is Networking Saturday!!  Have fun and find new ways to promote your blog and shops there too!

What I Will Be Looking For...

As I mentioned yesterday, I can hardly wait to see the new movie "Grand Budapest Hotel".  There are so many things to be excited about:  the great cast, all the details that Wes Anderson has created for the film, but there is one thing that is of particular interest to us here at The Tearoom.

I know it has been a while since I have chatted about pastries here at The Tearoom, we have never lost our love for them.  I dream of the day we will return to Paris and get to visit patisseries once again and have our senses flooded with the tastes, scents and sights of beautiful pastries!  And so, when I was exploring the website for the movie, I found that Wes Anderson has provided us something very interesting to nibble on, so to speak.  Saorise Ronan plays Agatha, a pastry maker for the fictional patisserie Mendl's in, which supplies pastries to the Hotel.  She makes a pastry called "Courtesan de Chocolat".  I was pleased to find the recipe for them by clicking the green button in the upper right hand corner of the webpage entitled "AcademieZubrowka.com", in Lesson Two-The Lutz School: Beaux Arts, Literature and Culinary Evolution, Page 1, Section D.

Many times, I have featured the famous French pastry the Religieuse in our now-famous Tea Parties of The Imagination.  Just as a reminder the word "Religieuse" means "nun" in French.  I am beyond delighted to see that Mr. Anderson has created a delightful (albeit slightly naughty) play on words with his creation the "Courtesan"!  The recipe in the website even goes so far as to indicate the colors of the frosting for each of the three sections of choux (cream puff pastry), even the color of the buttercream used to decorate them as well as including a recipe for the chocolate creme anglaise filling!

Religieuse de verveine

from Hugo et Victor, Paris

My interpretation of the

soon-to-be-famous

Courtesan au Chocolat!

For a great review of the movie, please read this one from The New York Times.

Here's another good one at The Dissolve.

And for some great stills, as well as some amazing details from the premiere of the movie in Paris last month, please check out this feature from Vogue.

By Flickering Movielight...

Welcome Dear Friends,
As we sit in flickering movielight on most nights here in The Tearoom, I thought I would let you know which ones I have enjoyed the most (and which ones I can't wait to see!).

Here's a partial list of some movies I have especially enjoyed:
Anything by Jean-Pierre Jeunet - Delicatessen, Amelie, The City of Lost Children, Micmacs - some are darker than others, they are all amazingly imaginative!
Several from Wes Anderson - The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic of Steve Zissou, Darjeeling Limited and Moonrise Kingdom - All of them fun with quirky characters!
A couple from Jim Jarmusch - Night Train and Night on Earth - more interesting people in strange circumstances!
Two from Jacques Tati: Les Vacances de M. Hulot and Mon Oncle - both in French, but with limited dialog, both of these movies cheer me up so much when I'm sad.
Harvey - very sweet and charming
Alice in Wonderland, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, in fact all of Tim Burton's movies!
Cold Comfort Farm - so funny and lovely
Basquiat - a good portrait of this unique artists's life.
Frida - another great portrait of this great artist's life and loves.
The Fall - a visual feast and a beautiful story
Bread and Tulips - a woman escapes to Venice, from a life she no longer enjoys.
In the Realms of the Unreal - a great portrait of the outsider artist Henry Darger.  Beautiful and unique.
The Science of Sleep - Gorgeous and surreal
Melancholia - A beautiful but terrifying movie.
Hugo - So enchanting!
Marie Antoinette - Sophia Coppola blended history and pop culture in a gorgeous way with this film.
Midnight in Paris - Like taking a trip to Paris in two hours!  So much fun!
Hotel Splendide - Strange, quirky and beautiful
Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast - One of the strangest and most beautiful movies I have ever seen.
The Enchanted April - The movie you watch when you can't wait for spring to arrive!
Shadows and Fog - So many great characters and just a great atmosphere
Wings of Desire - Very beautiful, in German with subtitles.
Chocolat - Gorgeous with a great cast.
Priceless, The Valet, Welcome to the Sticks - all very funny French movies.

All of these films I can say make the wheels of my imagination spin!

And what am I looking forward to seeing?

I cannot wait to see "Grand Budapest Hotel"
the newest masterpiece by Wes Anderson!
I think I will probably want to move in once I see it!

(I have something else to chatter about regarding

this movie tomorrow!)

The other film I can't wait to see this year is "Mood Indigo" with Audrey Tautou and Romain Duris.


Romain Duris was so good in so many movies (Le Divorce and Paris, to name only two), and of course, Audrey Tautou is so lovely and charming.  Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Science of Sleep) directs, so I am sure it will be a treat.

What movies are you looking forward to seeing?

Signs of Life...

And once again today, I'm participating in the Linky Party at Butterfly in the Attic (and I would like to thank Colleen once again for featuring my Secret Garden Printable Invitation on her blog Butterfly in the Attic! Thank you, thank you, thank you Dear Colleen!)

Yesterday, we saw a robin for the first time this year!  Spring can't be far away now!

I have two new collage sheets ready for Easter and Springtime projects in Velvet Revived:

This is the Pastel Easter Digital Collage Sheet

and

 The Easter Bouquet Digital Collage Sheet

Both are now available in Velvet Revived.

And don't forget to visit the Linky Party!

Please come back tomorrow when I will be chattering about some of our favorite movies (as well as those we can't wait to see!)