Shiny new website design... and Happy Memorial Day

My project this week has been to update and revamp my website, to make Lunagirl.com more streamlined and as user-friendly as I can. I'm liking the results ~ looking good with larger images, and much easier to browse.

I now have a list of all collage sheet categories that stays on the left sidebar while you're browsing ~ a big help, because there are SO many!

Featuring some new collage sheets, as well as Independence Day/Patriotic collage sheets, Summertime, and hundreds of images in the theme Flowers Nature and Woodland.

Anyway, I hope you will check it out! ...  Have a great weekend. Have fun, stay safe, and take some time to remember what Memorial Day is really about.

Did you know...... about Lunagirl's gift shop?

You can buy Lunagirl shirts, sweatshirts, other clothing, tote bags, baby items, mugs, journals and more by visiting our Lunagirl Shop. Featuring a variety of Victorian Edwardian and vintage images: Halloween and Christmas pictures, antique advertising labels, women, men, fairies and angels, flowers, animals and birds, antique trains and planes, fantasy and steampunk, even beautiful paintings by Van Gogh, Bouguereau and Waterhouse.  And it's at Cafepress, which has all kinds of discount offers and specials this time of year (and throughout the year, really).  Last but not least, you'll also find Lunagirl Calendars for 2012!

Featured: French Easter Photos & Postcards on CD

 Perfect for Easter season crafts: our Lunagirl Easter Photos & Postcards CD includes 100 charming vintage images. Most feature ladies, children, and romantic couples, many with eggs, baskets, flowers, and/or Easter greetings (usually in French!) This lovely and unique offering, created especially for Lunagirl customers using antique cards from our private collection, is available now. Click here to see details and a bunch of sample images!

Pink Angels

A Lunagirl collage sheet design featuring charming angels in shades of pink. Click on the sample image to see all of our angel collage sheet designs!

The Origins of Halloween Customs

Halloween is a familiar holiday to Americans. Children disguised as ghosts and goblins (and superheroes and princesses) roam the streets trick-or-treating; teenagers play pranks and try to frighten themselves with trips to the graveyard and scary movies; and generally everyone has a good time drinking cider (or something harder), bobbing for apples, wearing costumes, and waiting for "the witching hour."

But few people know of the origins of Halloween and its wonderful mood of magic and fright.

CLICK HERE to find out more! in our exclusive feature article:
"BETWEEN THE WORLDS: The Origins of Halloween & Its Customs."
Illustrated with wonderful antique Victorian vintage greeting cards!

Featured Collage Sheet: The Witching Hour

We offer a variety of Vintage Halloween collage sheets (plus our Holidays CD set!) ~ here's one with something just a little different, great for any time of year if you want some"witchy" ladies for your projects. "The Witching Hour" features some gorgeous Pre-Raphaelite paintings and fairy tale illustrations, plus altered Victorian postcards. Witches at their cauldrons, a sorceress or two, an ice queen, a lady gazing into her crystal ball, and a couple of little girl witches...

FULL MOON TONIGHT!

Lunagirl Collage Sheets on CD: New Additions!

We have recently released 3 new collections of Lunagirl ephemera collage sheets on CD ~ that makes TEN VOLUMES! They are ideal for altered art, altered boxes, jewelry, decoupage, scrapbooking and other paper crafts.

Digital collage sheets are easy to use: Each is a high-resolution jpg image, ready to print onto your own fine papers, transparencies, vellum, the choice is yours. Best of all, you may print them as often as you like for personal non-commercial use.

At just 99 CENTS per collage sheet, our collage sheet CDs are an unbeatable value! You get the highest quality digital collage sheets available for an incredible price ~ and you can print them over and over again.

We spend a great deal of time and care creating our unique ephemera collage sheets, to make them beautiful, interesting & diverse. Check them out at Lunagirl.com.

You can also purchase Lunagirl collage sheets individually by instant download, of course.

What we've been up to lately

We haven't been posting as much here because we are so busy creating new collections and new editions! Just published, a revised edition of our beautiful Victorian Flowers image CD, with more newly acquired, newly restored and embellished flower images. I've been collecting floral postcards for awhile and am glad to offer over 100 beautiful new images on our Flowers CD. Over 900 flowers.

DETAILS & SAMPLE IMAGES HERE

Also just published, we now offer a Victorian Birds CD! We have taken the birds that were formerly offered with our flowers and added to them over 300 new birds images, to create a fabulous new collection of over 500 birds.

This collection includes sweet Victorian greeting cards, pretty watercolors, and a great selection of antique prints. There are whimsical and humorous birds as well as detailed realistic nature prints. Bird eggs, too! ALL 300 DPI and ready to print.

DETAILS AND SAMPLE IMAGES HERE

This image CD includes 100 Audubon birds in a size appropriate for card making, altered art, etc., but if you want large Audubon prints suitable for framing, see my post earlier this month about our Birds of America 2-CD Set!

Submit your creations for our gallery!

We enjoy seeing how our customers use Lunagirl images in their artwork and craft projects ~ you'll find handcrafted items using our images in many of our customers' web stores and auctions, as well as crafts fairs and shops all over the world ~ and we would love to create a special customer gallery page at Lunagirl.com.

If you would like to share your latest creation, please email us at info@lunagirl.com.
Examples could be:
your latest ATC, ACEO or other mixed media or altered art creation
a favorite scrapbook page using vintage imagery
fabric art such as a handbag, quilt or fabric collage
captured fairies, assemblage, altered art jewelry creations.....
our customers are very creative, so we can't wait to see what they wish to share!

Your picture should be a jpg image ~ a minimum size of about 400 pixels on the longest side would be best for a quality image. Please be sure to tell us which Lunagirl image CD or collage sheet you used in creating your work.

NEW FROM LUNAGIRL Vintage Sheet Music!

This is a really great addition to our offerings.... a unique collection of vintage sheet music, including the cover illustrations as well as inside music pages with musical notation and words to these old songs! 152 song booklets including front cover art, all music pages, and back covers. PLUS 50 extra covers.

Over 800 jpg images in all ~ all are high-resolution and printable. Print at the size you need for crafts or altered art, or print at larger sizes to create fabulous framed prints.

Great for musicians, collectors, historians. Print to frame for your home or business, to sing and play music, or to use as ephemera in art projects.

CLICK HERE to see lots of sample images and more details......

NEW Botanical Flower Prints!

We have been working on several collections of antique prints, and here is the latest: A fine collection of floral botanical prints.

These are digitized and ready to print, and they in a larger size and high resolution to create large prints! So artists and crafters can resize these lovely flower and plant images to smaller sizes for craft projects and card making, but you can also create gorgeous larger botanical prints ready to frame for your home, office, etc!

CLICK HERE to see more.

Great Saturday Project: Easter Eggs with All Natural Dyes!

Did you know you can make natural egg dyes from stuff around your kitchen? I looked around for tips on dyeing Easter eggs with natural dyes and picked a few of the best links to share! This is a great "old-fashioned" way to dye eggs, but also a "new-fashioned" way to avoid artificial dyes and over-commercialization of holiday celebrations. It's a fun experiment and a fun way to spend some time with your kids!

The earliest traditional colors for Easter eggs were red and green, btw. Red is the most ancient sacred color, the color of life energy. Green of course is also symbolic of life and vitality and renewal. Pastel colors became popular later, probably in imitation of the pinks and yellows and lavenders of Spring flowers. Supposedly teal is the "hot" color this year!!

Here are some links ~ have fun:
http://www.floridaherbs.com/Newsletter_Archives_Dyeing_Easter_Eggs.htm
http://www.organicconsumers.org/school/eggs060405.cfm
http://www.aeb.org/kidsandfamily/eastereggs/naturaldyed.asp

On that last link, you'll want to click the "next" button at the bottom a couple of times, because the next few pages have wonderful ideas for decorating eggs with stencils, leaves and seeds, ribbon, even postage stamps!

The vintage egg greeting card pictures are from
Lunagirl Victorian Holidays & Occasions.

Cold Winds .... and CIRCA ARTE at ZNE

It got cold again (of course). Snow flurries even! Here I am shivering with my basket of flowers. March always does this to me (those of you in Minnesota and Montana probably find it amusing that I think it's cold here). Oh well, the birds are still here and the daffodils always seem to survive the cold snaps!

ZNE is doing something cool I want to share. They have a podcast called Circa Arte which features topics of interest to mixed media artists -- art tips and education, product reviews, interviews with artists. For more info and schedule click the banner below!

If you're not familiar with ZNE: It's short for variaZioNE, Mixed Media & Indie Artists Connected. We're proud to be a member and to watch ZNE grow. It's mostly online, a great place to meet other artists and view their work, chat, discuss, share your own art, etc. If you enjoy creating or just seeing collage art, altered art, and other mixed media, check it out at http://www.zneart.com/.

Spring on the way! Free image!

Spring doesn't officially arrive for about 3 more weeks, but you can't tell it today here in Tennessee. There's a bright blue sky, a strong gusty breeze, and predicted high in the 70s! Birdsong greets me when I step outside (along with the wind!). The goldfinches are pairing up, the males turning brighter yellow. I've seen a wren looking for a nesting spot, and soon there will be bluebirds doing the same.

All this spring energy has inspired a Happy Monday free image from Lunagirl. To enjoy for your personal projects: Yellow daffodils, the heralds of spring on the way!

Vintage Romance

To our regular visitors, I apologize for neglecting the blog for awhile! We have been quite busy around here. The least I can do is give you a link to our Lunagirl Feature Article on VINTAGE ROMANCE, just in time for St. Valentine's Day. It has bits of fun information about the origins of Valentines Day and its customs, and of course plenty of pretty pictures to look at!

I've been creating new Lunagirl collage sheets like crazy. You can see all the latest at http://lunagirl.com/W-Lunagirl-Collage-Sheets-NEW.htm

I think there are too many new ones to put them all here, but I do want to share a couple of favorites on the theme of Vintage Romance!

Stay tuned for Vintage Blue Flappers, and a link to our Feature Article on The Victorian Language of Flowers (Spring is around the corner!)

NEW "Mignon" Vintage Postcards

"Mignon" is a French opera first performed at the Opera Comique in Paris in 1866, based on Goethe's story of a little gypsy girl, the man who falls in love with her, and the man she finally realizes is her father.

Mignon photo postcards were very popular with the Victorians and Edwardians. They often show her praying or longing for her home or her lover, or with her guitar.

These French cards are lovely examples. I've selected them for their beauty and character, restored them and enhanced the color and tint on some. They are perfect for ATCs, altered art and boxes, scrapbooks, card making, assemblage, mixed media, decoupage and more. They can even be printed small for charms, pendants and other jewelry.

AVAILABLE AT LUNAGIRL.COM

More New Collage Sheets!

Well, I've been very busy creating a whole bunch of new Lunagirl collage sheet designs -- just in time for all those projects you've been planning. Winter is a great time to settle in with a cup of tea or coffee and get creative! To start, here are some gorgeous butterfly cards from turn-of-the-century France, to remind you of spring.

You'll find all Lunagirl collage sheets at Lunagirl.com, ready to purchase and download instantly to print onto your own papers. If you prefer to buy them already printed, just let me know.

How about some vintage beauties in soft romantic tones, or some dashing men? Vintage photographs of men can be hard to find, and these are some great ones.

Unique family photographs from the 1900s to 1930s. I enjoy restoring and altering these to make them perfect for altered art, and we are pleased to share them in digital form so that the originals need not be damaged when you use them as art supplies!

Charming Fairy Collage Sheets - New!

I've just created these great little fairies with colorful butterfly wings! I've used figures from vintage postcards and photos -- cropped, cleaned up and sometimes colored -- and added lovely wings from our various butterfly wings collage sheets. I think the results are charming, and I'm pleased to offer them on three new Lunagirl collage sheets.

Click on any of the samples to visit the "angels and fairies" page of our collage sheets download shop.

Add your own backgrounds and collage them with other images and word (and even objects) -- you'll find lots to inspire on our other collage sheets. Or use them for decoupage, in your scrapbooks, to create assemblages (maybe a captured fairy?) ...They love to grace your journals and altered boxes or tins.

Most are girls or lady fairies, but there are two of the masculine persuasion. Note the little boy on and footballer/rugby dude on fairies 2 and the funny fellow on fairies 1!

Bonne Année - 365 jours de bonheur!

Judging by the number of New Year cards we come across, sending greetings for the new year was very popular in the Victorian and Edwardian eras -- maybe as popular as sending Christmas cards! We're developing a lovely collection of vintage photo postal cards originally sent to wish friends and family Happy New Year (or Bonne Année, a good year, in French).

And looking at the dates on the back, they sent them not only at January 1st, but throughout the season from after Christmas into the first weeks of January. We think that's a lovely custom that we should revive!

Cards usually carried wishes for happiness, prosperity, and sometimes health and friendship, and often featured pictures of good luck symbols such as four-leaf clovers, horseshoes, coins, even pigs (an old lucky symbol that has gone by the wayside). Many have charming photos of children, ladies, or romantic couples.

You'll find a nice selection of restored cards on our Christmas New Years Photos Postcards CD, and also on the New Years French Postcards collage sheet below. Heureuse Année!

Here is another new collage sheet design for New Years Day. I really love this one created with antique French postal cards that I've restored and embellished. These are so beautiful, and you could use them for other projects at any time of year!