Free Digital Backgrounds created by Lunagirl

We've been featuring the Carte Postale digital backgrounds in most of the Design Team projects, along with a couple of Antique Adverts digital backgrounds, so today I'm spotlighting a different type of digital background I have available.  The freebies below are examples of digital backgrounds I have created from Victorian / Art Nouveau wallpaper patterns!  Two of my favorite colors, and I always love gardens and birds. You can find many more such patterned backgrounds on my collage sheets page at Lunagirl.com.

These digital backgrounds are my altered creations, so if you use them please remember to credit Lunagirl and link back to my site above, but I am happy to share in hopes of inspiring you!  These are nice large images that you can crop, enlarge, or reduce in size as needed.  They are lovely as backgrounds for cards, scrapbooking, and mixed media, and also very pretty for creating jewelry charms.  ~ Karen

Enter the Blog Challenge: DIVA

Time to start submitting your entries for the next Lunagirl Moonbeams Blog Challenge: DIVA!

This challenge (#2) will end at 11:55 pm on June 2 ~  The winner will be selected randomly and will receive a free Lunagirl digital collage sheet of his or her choice.

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Victorian Scrapbook Pages Part Two

 The word ephemera is related to ephemeral, meaning temporary or transitory and not meant to last. Antique scrapbooks preserved bits of paper that otherwise would be lost to time ~ thereby preserving memories as well and giving us a window into the life of women and girls long ago. And sometimes men, too ~ for example, Mark Twain loved scrapbooking!
 

Antique scrapbooks often contained trade cards, which were printed by companies to advertise their products and were often collected for their colorful sentimental or humorous illustrations. Calling cards (or "visiting cards") were often saved in scrapbooks.   A child's scrapbook might include Reward of Merit cards received at Sunday School or school, to be shared at family gatherings.
 

As scrapbooking became more popular, one could buy sheets of "scraps" with die-cuts, chromos, or embossed reliefs created especially for scrap albums. Newspaper clippings, tickets, letters, greeting cards, any little bits of paper ephemera might find their way into a Victorian scrapbook.

Victorian Scrapbook Pages

The popularity of scrapbooking is nothing new ~ the word "scrap-book" appears in print as early as 1854, and people were pasting mementos into albums at least a hundred years before that.

Victorian young ladies often kept "memory books" that might be filled with cards, scraps, signatures, poetry, sketches, quotes, photographs, dried flowers, even locks of hair.  They collected calling cards to show their popularity and created friendship albums to give as gifts.

Scrapbooks were sometimes used to teach children at home and in Sunday school, or just as a "rainy day" activity for mother and children.  Ladies' magazines gave tips for scrapbooking supplies to be kept on hand.

Victorians created scrapbooks as a way to preserve mementos and memories of special events, to celebrate family and friends, to show off achievements, to document personal interests and tastes, to remember childhood, and of course as an enjoyable hobby.  Just like we do today!  More on antique scrapbooks on Monday...

Featured Artist: Kimberly S Van Rossum

For our featured artist today, we'll do something unusual for us and tell you about a wonderful artist who creates and sells designer graphics and scrapbook elements! Kimberly's Dream features the artwork of Kimberly S Van Rossum.

Her gorgeous colorful designs are lots of fun. They can complement our vintage and vintage-inspired designs nicely, or add a whole new look on their own!

Kimberly's designs are hand painted with quality watercolors and hot pressed watercolor paper, then enhanced on the computer to create digital designs available for downloading.

They are truly lovely ~ a variety of graphics sets in different themes with matching/coordinating background papers. I've shown a couple of my favorites, but you'll find many more at Kimberly's Dream.

LATEST RELEASES from LUNAGIRL

Two gorgeous new collections from Lunagirl: Vintage Girls & Boys and Vintage Women & Men!

Both offer a bounty of beautiful 300 dpi images from the Victorian Edwardian eras through the 1930s, including a wide variety images from postcards, die-cuts and scraps, and stunning fine art paintings! A must for anyone who loves vintage.

Why buy digital craft supples? These days saving money is on everyone's mind, and if you've bought paper crafting supplies you know how quickly the cost adds up. Instead of buying single copies of paper pictures and stickers, get beautiful, high-quality digital images on our easy-to-use CDs, and print them over and over again, on any and all papers you like, whenever you need them.

NEW LUNAGIRL IMAGE CD!

Just in time for holiday crafts: we're pleased to annouce this new collection of Victorian & vintage holiday images from Lunagirl. This lovely collection includes over 250 images originally from antique French, German & Italian postcards sent to celebrate Christmas and New Years Day. We've scanned the cards as high-resolution tiffs, done some restoration work and embellishment, then finally saved them on CD as 300-dpi jpgs for you to browse and print.

Most of these are photos, although some are illustrations. Many of the cards have greetings in various languages, either original or added by us, but you can of course alter them and add your own messages as well. We have removed major creases and tears, and in some cases embellished or enhanced. Usually we have removed the stamps, but we left the original little French stamps on some, as many buyers like them. I've also included scans of the backs of a few cards, for the lovely old handwriting.

You'll find angels, children's portraits, children in the snow, ladies, romantic couples, happy new year & more. Enjoy them as printable digital ephemera for your altered art & scrapbooking, or create unique antique style tags and greeting cards for the winter holidays!

New collage sheet collections on CD!

We have recently released 7 new collections of Lunagirl ephemera collage sheets on CD! 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.

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!