The Language of Flowers

Enjoy this very Victorian set of flower emblems circa 1857, nicely sized for tags and all that sort of stuff.

All images are high resolution and free for your use. Please don't add them to digital collections for resale. Click below to visit my shop!

Year of the Dragon 2012

I don't have much in the way of Chinese dragons, and it's hard to find a western dragon illustration that doesn't show it being slain. But here's a beauty by Virginia Sterrett that is the first of several dragons I will post for the coming year. Hope you like it.

All images are high resolution and free for your use. Please don't add them to digital collections for resale. Click below to visit my shop!

These Are for Luck

Look at this lovely French dressing-screen. Who could it belong to? Maybe the lady in the next image. She looks like she just stepped out of a George Barbier fashion plate because she is, in fact, a George Barbier fashion plate.

There's nothing inherently lucky about these images, but I'm posting them for luck. I just need a little luck right now - the feeling that someone's got my back, keeping me in their good thoughts, and cheering me on a bit. You know? Things aren't bad but I just need that little boost.

So please accept these little gifts from me and direct a kind thought my way as you download them. As always they are large, high resolution and yours to enjoy free as long as you don't add them to digital collage sheets for resale. That's my gig. :) http://www.etsy.com/shop/ValentineGrimm

All images are high resolution and free for your use. Please don't add them to digital collections for resale. Click below to visit my shop!

Hey gals, whatcha gabbin' about?

What's on the minds of these 50s moms?

A) The porterhouse steaks they've boosted inside those fake Tide boxes.
B) The deal they've just struck to knock off each other's husbands.
C) Which of their charming ranch-style homes will be the site of their next sex toy party.

The correct answer, of course, is that they're talking about my latest collage sheet, Retro Moms. It's loaded with unreal housewives and fabulous 50s accoutrements like a fashion-forward fridge, a wood-paneled station wagon, a space-age blender and a cabinet teevee. Add a fistful of bennies and a pitcher of martinis, and you'll be ready to leave your made-in-China living for the nostalgic world of real American kitsch.
http://www.etsy.com/listing/84766161/retro-moms-digital-collage-sheet-unreal

All images are high resolution and free for your use. Please don't add them to digital collections for resale. Click below to visit my shop!

Long Time No See

Sorry I've lagged behind on posting the freebs but I've had stuff going on. You know. Trying to make a buck. :) Trying not to spend every buck I make. Just about everybody's in the same boat (99% by some estimates) and that's why I'm so very grateful to all of you who stop by my shop and pick up an art sheet or two. Bless you who buy, and bless you even more who can't.

I think about my customers the whole time I'm working on new sheets. I know that a lot of you use my images to design crafts to sell, and I think about what will help you make a sale. I hunt for unique graphics and photos and put a lot of work into formatting them into crisp, clear, impactful images in the small sizes many customers prefer. 

I get a lot of pleasure from working with vintage images, but my greatest satisfaction comes from helping others achieve their goals. I hope the free images I post here are as useful to you as the ones I sell. To make up for lost time, here's a bunch with something for everyone.

PS: I changed my blog format so it's easier to find images. Let me know if you like it!

All images are high resolution and free for your use. Please don't add them to digital collections for resale. If you like this blog please share the url, and visit my shop: http://www.etsy.com/shop/ValentineGrimm

All images are high resolution and free for your use. Please don't add them to digital collections for resale. Click below to visit my shop!

OMG Halloween

It has just sunk in that Halloween is right around the corner, a little ways down the street, and hiding inside the dark alley where it's waiting to choke me to death. (I've got to stop reading the local news in brief.) Here's one of the images that will be slowly slithering its way onto one of my scary sheets. With much sibilance. Like a snake. Ssssssss.

All images are high resolution and free for your use. Please don't add them to digital collections for resale. Click below to visit my shop!

Now Museum, Now You Don't

This museum-quality fan is of Spanish origin, painted in the Chinese style, and makes a great excuse for posting a bad pun.

All images are high resolution and free for your use. Please don't add them to digital collections for resale. Click below to visit my shop!

Allo

Isn't he cute? So meticulously rendered, too. That's why I've chosen him and his friends to star in a sheet I've just started work on. It will be done...eventually.

I just counted and it turns out I'm working on ten new sheets for my shop. That doesn't include new formats for image collections I've already listed (like when I do circles and then do squares, etc). Working on so many sheets at once means I don't finish any of them right away. It isn't profitable for me or gratifying for customers who are looking for new images. But it's good for the work. Know what I mean? When I get stuck on the best way to do something, or get bored staring at the same set of images, it's good to switch to a different sheet and work on that one for awhile.

All images are high resolution and free for your use. Please don't add them to digital collections for resale. Click below to visit my shop!

Everybody Gets a Car!

I'm not Oprah but I can still give away cars.

This Labor Day weekend I honor American workers with gleaming examples of their work from a golden era when the middle class was strong and employees shared in the fruits of their labor. Those were the days.

It's a long weekend so why not visit my shop and browse the fruits of my labor. Get in the car and let's go!

All images are high resolution and free for your use. Please don't add them to digital collections for resale. Click below to visit my shop!

The Dreaded Spinning Beach Ball of Death

It's what you see on Mac OSX when an application isn't responding: a whirling little rainbow ball, so cheerful. When you see it spinning for Finder, it's chilling.

Today I had to force repeated hard starts before I discovered that the problem isn't the computer but the external hard drive. Whew. I mean, eeek! The external hard drive where I keep bajillions of images stored with only limited backup because I ran out of space? Now I'm frantically skimming the internet to see if I should buy even bigger storage or just store online. Not that online servers don't fail...

Is there a patron saint of digital storage who can protect my precious cache? Maybe these pretty cherubs will watch over things. They are a detail from an old lithograph that was embellished with German scrap.

All images are high resolution and free for your use. Please don't add them to digital collections for resale. Click below to visit my shop!

For Lovers of Stained Glass

Among the most popular images I offer in my shop are those of stained glass. The royalty-free photos I prefer to use are richer and more detailed than drawn designs, but art is beautiful too. These images (approx. 1.5" each) come from an old catalog of glass designs.

Also very popular are my Sacred Heart images in a wide selection of sizes and shapes. I'm always on the lookout for more, and like to alter some of the black and white images I find to offer you exclusive designs you won't anywhere else. I'm working on an intriguing sheet of mystical heart illustrations scanned from very old books. It'll be awhile before it's done - I try a lot of different effects before I'm satisfied, and have been known to change sheets even after they've been listed awhile - but the original images are very unusual so it should turn out really cool. :)

All images are high resolution and free for your use. Please don't add them to digital collections for resale. Click below to visit my shop!

Jools

Ever have one of those days when you just want to look at something pretty and then go to bed? This may help: French trinkets from the 17th century. Nighty night.

All images are high resolution and free for your use. Please don't add them to digital collections for resale. Click below to visit my shop!

Astounding

In the steampink world of the future, men will dress like little girls in matching shorts and mary janes, and keep it green by growing their pets in lily ponds. That's the promise of this pulp magazine cover, one of several that didn't make it onto my latest collage sheet of fantastic!, amazing!, startling! sci-fi illustrations which you can find in my shop right about.........now.

All images are high resolution and free for your use. Please don't add them to digital collections for resale. Click below to visit my shop!

Everybody's in Showbiz

This smokin' babe is Bebe Daniels, star of stage and screen whose best-known role (at least to me) is as the leading lady who breaks her ankle in the 1933 movie 42nd Street, thus paving the way for the success of her understudy, played by Ruby Keeler. This illustration of Miss Daniels dates from even earlier in her career - 1920.

All images are high resolution and free for your use. Please don't add them to digital collections for resale. Click below to visit my shop!

Awakened by a Kiss

All it takes is one kiss to change your whole world. That's why the theme of my latest digital collage sheet is Fairy Tale Kisses: scads of smooches from vintage art and illustration, each one framed in a glowing heart and surrounded by flowers.

The illustrations above depict the moment when the Prince discovers Sleeping Beauty and is about to release her from her spell. Created by renowned illustrators Warwick Goble, Arthur Rackham and Edmund Dulac, they are beautiful but do not suit the storytelling in my compilation, so I offer them here. Enjoy!

All images are high resolution and free for your use. Please don't add them to digital collections for resale. Click below to visit my shop!