Still Life. . .

The collage challenge prompt this week on The Three Muses is "Still Life".  Per their prompt, my collage this week is simpler than I usually do, just a plum and a pansy.  I had fun adding some darker shadows and a dragonfly to make it resemble those gorgeous Flemish still life paintings!  It's very interesting to me that my horoscope on Free Will Astrology actually mentions the Flemish artist Jan Van Eyck!  It's more of that artistic synchronicity that I'm always yammering on about!

(Images I used in my collage this week include the dragonfly from The Graphics Fairy and the background from Shadowhouse Creations.  All other images from vintage postcards and ephemera from my personal collection.)

Do You Remember When . . .?

Dearest Friends,
Do you remember a time when you used to buy those lovely Valentines to give to your friends and family?  Inspired by them, I have created a new sheet for Velvet Revived!

These Valentines are from my new Print and Cut Valentine Sheet!

Once again today, I'm participating in the 

Postcard Lover's Link Up Party at Butterfly in the Attic!  

I am linking to this newest collage sheet there, 

as well as the other new Hearts and Flowers Sheet !

Be sure and check out the other participants in this fun party at Butterfly in the Attic!

The Moon and I...

Dearest Friends of The Tearoom,
It has been such a long time since we have seen our Dear Friend Violette!  Today, she has returned in a collage I did for the Take A Word Collage Challenge this week.  The prompt this week was "Moon" and as you may or may not know, I love creating new stories involving that other Dear Friend of The Tearoom, The Moon!  Here, I have created a collage I have had in my head for a long time.

...And once again, as I have before, I pose the question to you, "What if The Man in the Moon is really a Woman?"

(Images I used in my collage today are from The Graphics Fairy and Wikipedia).

Additional note:  Since so many of my nice blogging friends have commented that they would like to see more of Violette, I just thought I would let you know that she went for a very romantic and fanciful ride to another tearoom in this post about a Mad Tea Party.  Also, there is a very sweet portrait of her with Victorienne in this post as well!

More of What's New . . .

Dear Friends,
As promised in this blog post, I have been working on even more new things for my Etsy shops!  Today, please allow me to show you what I have been working on for The Gossamer Tearoom shop:

The "Entrance to Dreamland" Print

I enlarged my scan of the vintage postcard I bought of this long-gone, but not forgotten section of Coney Island, hand-tinted it with pigment and metallic inks, and finally, added some Stickles in Platinum and Starry Night for extra sparkle!  This image makes me dream and I'm not done having fun with it!  Available in The Gossamer Tearoom shop here.

Inspirational Quote by C.S. Lewis

For those of us needing a small reminder that it does all get better, an inspirational quote by C.S. Lewis.  I have hand-stamped the letters with various letters from my rubber stamp collection and then added a vivid purple blue color of Stickles to the illuminated capital letters.  It has a very Dada-influenced look, an art movement which has always fascinated me!  Perfect for framing and available in The Gossamer Tearoom shop here.

(A close up of one of the glittered letters!)

Thank you for taking a peek at my most recent projects!

I have more that I will show you soon!

What Is That Strange Music We Hear?

The prompt from the Three Muses Collage Challenge this week is "Music".  So, I thought the creation of a musical instrument from my imagination was in order!  May I present to you, The Amazing Three-String Butterfly-O-Gram!!  Once you turn the crank on the side, the trained butterfly floats along the strings, playing them.  The sound is somewhat like a musical saw!  The volume and tone can be adjusted by twiddling the glowing star buttons on the front.  And to further sweeten the notes, the specially-made dessert mutes have been added to the horns.  Now, the only trick is to make sure the butterfly doesn't eat the desserts before the performance is over!

Do you wonder what I was listening to while I created this collage?  I was listening to a CD I made from the "MicMacs" soundtrack.  This disc is made up of just the music that was written by Raphael Beau.  Each piece is very sweetly mechanical and perfect for creating fanciful musical instruments to!  Take a listen and see what you think!  And if you haven't seen it, do yourself a favor and watch "MicMacs"!  It was directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the director who made "Amelie", one of our favorite films ever!!

Images used in my collage this week from Tumble Fish Studios at DeviantScrap and from my personal collection.

What's New in The Tearoom for 2014?

Hello Dear Friends!
I hope your year is starting out wonderfully!  It's been very cold and snowy, here in The Land of The Tearoom, so I have been very productive so far, staying in, avoiding the weather!

I have some new silk brooch designs that I will be working on soon, but first, I was interested in getting a couple of new designs done for digital collage sheets for Velvet Revived.

First, Valentine's Day will be upon us very soon, so the time to start making hand-made cards for your loved ones is now!  My new Hearts and Flowers sheet will give you lots of great ideas for making those Valentines!  These images are also great for your digital projects as well!

This next set of sheets is based on a vintage postcard that I fell in love with and bought from an Etsy seller.  It is called "Entrance to Dreamland - Coney Island" and it is just amazing!  I have had so much fun coloring versions of this image for these sheets (you get two sheets of images in this set).  And for more fun, I have added an un-altered version of the image as well!  You can have fun adding color, either digitally or with inks or watercolors, adding glitter, whatever you think makes this image even more wonderful than it already is!  I hope you will have fun with it!

You can expect to see more of this image in different parts of The World of The Tearoom soon!

Colour Me Happy

Dear Friends,
Happy New Year!
The topic this week on The Three Muses Collage Challenge is "Colour Me Happy".  They asked that our collages this week be based on a color or combination of colors that makes us happy.  Anyone who has spent only a few minutes around The Tearoom would know that my favorite color is purple!  But how many of you could guess what my second favorite color is?  No, it isn't black (although it might be a very close third choice!!).  My second favorite color is chartreuse!  I love it as an accent in a lot of my collages, but especially along with purple.  So, to me, the first place I know I can use both purple and chartreuse is in a garden!

Here is Victorienne once again, this time in a garden of giant pansies!  She is surrounded by all sorts of shades of purple: violet, lavender, periwinkle, dusky plums, smoky eggplants, magnificent magentas.  And this riot of purples occurs on a backdrop of those lovely green-yellow shades: chartreuse, absinthe, pistachio.  It all just spells instant happy for me!

Please go check out everyone else's choices for happy colors at The Three Muses here!

(All images in this collage from Charmed Memory Collage on Etsy and postcards from my personal collection.)