Happy New Year, DVDs and more FREE pictures

2013 is now with us and I have to say good riddance to 2012 which, for ourselves and quite a few of our friends, was not a good year.

April saw the end of our 10 year old business, Mad about Cards.  A lot of blood, sweat and tears had gone into the business, a lot of happy times and laughter - but the end and what led up to it was difficult and we're still dealing with the consequences of it.

For our good friends Jane & Rob, the loss of their daughter Zoe at the age of just 13 was, and will continue to be, unbearable.

For Pete & Sue, you've been through a terrible time this year - I think for you guys it will make you stronger.

Several other friends have had relationship problems, some of which are not yet resolved.  Love and hugs to those guys - hope the solutions will become clear.

For us, the end of Mad about Cards meant that we could, and had to, throw all our efforts into Printable Heaven.  I must say I love it and that's where my heart lay anyway but it's been hard work bringing it up to where we wanted it to be.

I've just started working on a few card-making items again for 2013 but I thought I'd post a few pictures here from our public domain image DVDs (www.printableheaven.com/pdildvd).

This first one makes me laugh - the little dog on the left definitely looks like he's working up to having his wicked way with the dog on the right!  This one's from our Animal DVD.

This is a lovely Chinese design from our Backgrounds & Designs DVD.

Having been doing an Art History course for a while, I've really enjoyed putting together our Fine Art DVD. This picture is by an artist I hadn't heard of before, Jean-Jacques Henner.  I think this is very much in the vein  of 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' don't you think?  Love it.

This one is by Cecil Aldin who is best-known for his pictures of dogs.  This cockatoo is simply lovely.

And finally, this one's from our Flower DVD.

I've featured pictures from a couple of our other DVDs before, Arthur Rackham and Jessie Willcox Smith, so please look at previous posts for those.

For our full range of DVDs see www.printableheaven.com/pdildvd.

A Happy New Year to everyone.  Let's hope that 2013 brings you happiness and health, with a little wealth thrown in too!

Public Domain DVDs - FREE Arthur Rackham pictures

I've been 'missing' for the last couple of months - no blog.  I'll tell you why.....

I think it was back in August that we started selling La Pashe products on www.printableheaven.com and this, fortunately, gave me a bit of breathing space.  It meant that I didn't have to design so much in the way of card-making products so I could get on with what I'd been waiting to get on with for ages - public domain DVDs.

The first one I started working on was Arthur Rackham (www.printableheaven.com/rackhamdvd) - just love his illustrations.  As he died in 1939 his work is out of copyright, or in the 'public domain', for all countries that follow the rule of lifetime plus 70 years (which includes most countries except the US).

For the US the rules are, or were, a little different in that it's the date of the work that's taken into account rather than the death date of the author/artist.  For our DVD, however, it just means that there is one book on there (Wind in the Willows) that's out of copyright in the UK but not yet in the US (for that reason we have a US version of the DVD which has 12 less images on it at www.printableheaven.com/rackhamdvdus).  As there are well over 600 images on both DVDs, I'm sure our US friends won't particularly miss those 12!

I will go on in future blogs to explain a little more about the copyright rules but I thought I'd tell you first how I discovered the concept of public domain.......

It was in September 2009 that my step-father went into residential care at the age of 82 and suffering from lung-cancer (having been a smoker for 70 years!).  His flat was going on the market and my sisters and I had the arduous task of clearing out his smoky-smelling, yellowed things.  We'd been running Printable Heaven for a while - I designed card-making decorations using a graphics programme which usually took some time.....

From a drawer my sister pulled a tatty book.  It perhaps hadn't been on the bookshelf as it was in quite a state but my mum (when she was alive) and my step-father didn't like to throw anything away.  She flicked through the book and handed it to me saying 'You're the arty one, you might like this'.  The book, which I still have, was a book from around 1960 about advertising posters.

We'd just converted our double garage at the time into a lovely workspace with gorgeous walnut flooring and I wanted to put some suitable pictures up.  Seemed sacrilege to break up the book so I looked on the internet to see if I could find some of the same pictures to print off and frame for the garage.

I don't remember what happened next..... somehow I fell into this magical world of public domain and realised that there was a whole treasure trove out there of pictures that could quite legitimately be scanned and used - and that we could make money from.

My first public domain book purchase was from a local shop in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex and I didn't even know if the pictures would be out of copyright when I bought it - I was fortunate that they were.  It was The Everyday Fairy book with illustrations by Jessie Willcox Smith, whose pictures I love.

I now have a vast collection of out of copyright books, magazines and pictures - so many that I've regretfully had to start selling them on Ebay (to make room for more!)

The pictures here are all by Arthur Rackham from A Midsummer Night's Dream.  If you want to see our full (and growing) range of public domain DVDs, see www.printableheaven.com/pdildvd

Jessie Willcox Smith with FREE fantastic pictures!

Jessie Willcox Smith (1863-1935) was a lady determined to succeed in a male-dominated world.  She was originally training to be a kindergarten teacher but began painting after acting as chaperon in an art lesson given by her female cousin to a male pupil.  She took part in the lesson and discovered that she had a flair for it, so much so that she ended her teacher-training and enrolled in the School of Design for Women.  She soon realised that the school had little to offer her that would prepare her for an art career so she transferred to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts from where she began her career as an illustrator.

She quickly established that she couldn't survive doing freelance work alone so she went to work in the advertising department of the Ladies' Home Journal.  The turning point in her career came following participation in the first ever illustration class offered by the Drexel Institute of Arts and Sciences in Philadelphia.  This class was being taught by the master of illustration, Howard Pyle.

Pyle impressed upon her the need to become involved in the story and characters that she was painting.  Jessie became his most successful female student.  In 1898 she quit her job at the Ladies' Home Journal to concentrate on her career as an illustrator.  She quickly began to work for some of the leading periodicals of the period such as Collier's, Scribner's Magazine and Century amongst others.

Although many of her pictures depict the joy of motherhood and childhood, Jessie never actually married.  Her lifelong goal was to be a successful artist.  Most of the big children's books of the time were illustrated by men - the work of women generally appeared in the lesser-known books that just couldn't compete with the very successful titles.  Time and time again the most prestigious assignments were given to men, so when a woman embarked on a career as an illustrator, her future was uncertain.

Jessie Willcox Smith was one woman who did break into this male-dominated world which was an immense accomplishment.  

Jessie's works include 15 years working for Good Housekeeping magazine, her work appearing on more than 180 covers (likely earning about a quarter of a million dollars for this work); Charles Kingsley's 'The Water Babies'; Joanna Spyri's 'Heidi'; Louisa May Alcott's 'Little Women'; Clement C. Moore's 'Twas the Night before Christmas' and Charles Dickens's 'Dickens Children'.

You can see our card-making products that we've made using Jessie Willcox Smith images here:-  http://www.printableheaven.com/jws_everyday and here http://www.printableheaven.com/jws_xmas

Free Digital Stamps - Cricketers

It's a bit of a surreal day for me.  My son, who's 13, collapsed after school yesterday and we had to call an ambulance.  He was unconscious for about half an hour which was all very scary.  They kept him in last night and Andy's up there with him now. He seems to be fine and all tests have come back clear but it's a worry nonetheless.  No doubt he'll be back later and will return to the monosyllabic grunts as per usual - although this has made him quite chatty for a change!

Anyway, back to topic.  I have set myself the task of slowly scanning all of the pictures in my vast collection of old picture books and arranging them into files.  These images are from a 1930s/40s boys' annual and they would be good to use as digital stamps - just print and colour with Pro-markers, watercolours, coloured pencils etc.

La Pashe Christmas Crackers

We've got some lovely new decoupage sheets this week that will make humorous cards this Christmas.

These fab La Pashe sheets are available to download and use NOW - get yours and get started on your Christmas cards tonight at http://www.printableheaven.com/xmas_crackers

A trip to Amsterdam

We've been away in the last week to Amsterdam and a jolly nice time we had too!  We went with 8 of our neighbours so I must say more time was spent in bars than taking in the culture but we're back now to detox.

The things I liked best in Amsterdam were the lovely 17th century houses that line all the canals out there.  Elegantly tall and thin but crooked, leaning and skew-with - so interesting.

You can see some of the houses in the first picture here.  We're already planning to go back again, perhaps minus the neighbours so we can take in the culture a little more....

Images of London

I've been listening to Jamie Cullum this morning while I've been working and his song 'London Skies' got me thinking of images of London.

I've blogged before about London, covering the beautiful pictures of Rose Barton and Herbert Marshall but this time they're by another artist called Nelson Dawson.

Nelson Ethelred Dawson (1859-1941) was a member of the Arts & Crafts movement who was born in Lincolnshire and later moved to London.  Here are some of his pictures from a book called A Wanderer in London from 1906.

It's funny, I worked in London for 12 years but it was all lost on me then.  Now I love the wonderful old buildings and the history of it all.  Must go for a visit soon.....