Lunagirl Vintage: New Stuff, Free Stuff, & Fun Stuff — nature

The second artist that features prominently in our Japanese Prints collection CD is Hiroshige, the last great master of the ukiyo-e tradition. Like the influential Hokusai, Hiroshige departed from the usual ukiyo-e subjects of courtesans and actors. Instead he is remembered for his poetic landscapes and scenes of daily life and natural beauty.Hiroshige was born in 1797, into a family of samurai background. His father was the local fire warden, and upon his father's death Hiroshige became fire warden. He was twelve years old. This position left Hiroshige much free time to practice painting. At age fourteen, he was accepted...

Since I'm having an Asian Art & Ephemera theme for my blog challenge right now, I thought I would give a little background about two of my favorite Japanese artists, featured on our Japanese Prints & Photos CD. The first is Hokusai.

Katsushika Hokusai was a painter and printmaker, best known for his series of woodblock prints called Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji. You've probably seen some of these beautiful images, the most famous of which is The Great Wave Off Kanagawa.

Hokusai lived and worked during the late 1700s and early part of the 1800s. His father was probably a mirror-maker for the local shogun. His mother was possibly a concubine.  Hokusai began painting when he was...

Here's a lovely, easy project from Lark Crafts that offers a fun way to combine autumn leaves with Lunagirl vintage ephemera to create pendants and earrings for holiday gift-giving.Here's a link to the original tutorial:http://larkcrafts.com/craft-your-life/free-pressed-leaf-pendant-project/This would also be great inspiration for creating charms of any kind.. little ones are nice for bookmarks, bag charms, wine charms, etc. And you could use pressed flowers instead of leaves if you like.What would you make? Show me your creations and I would love to share them in my customer gallery!

I mentioned freebies, so here are some free vintage images that remind me of Autumn, for you to use in your personal crafts projects and mixed media art. These are two of my favorite antique Victorian style prints: a beautiful French botanical illustration of apples and a charming little brown barn owl with ivy! Both images are printable and perfect for Fall crafts, cards, scrapbooking, etc. Enjoy! If you happen to publish something you create with these, please remember to credit Lunagirl Images -- and if you want to use them commercially just email me!

 More vintage printable tags, this time with a honey bees theme! I created this set with aged antique paper, vintage French ephemera such as perfume labels and honey labels and botanical journal pages, some English-language ads and of course some lovely BEES and beehives! These shabby sepia tags are lots of fun, and you'll notice I titled the collection "Honeybee Tags 1" because I feel sure there will be more! My favorite in this set is probably the one that says Hi Honey, but I'm pretty fond of them all. Plenty more tags to feature in upcoming days, and I'm wanting...