Small Fans to Print

I just thought I would make a page of fans to cut out for making cards. I got all these from the public domain. I brightened them and cleaned them up a bit. These are small. The largest one is only 3" wide. I have them stored on a WIX server because blogger compresses the quality too much and resizes the page too small for printing. These should print out sharper at a higher quality on 8-1/2" x 11" card stock.

Besides compressing files too much and making them look bad, blogger will not let me upload PDFs, SVGs and ZIP files so I have to store them on other free servers.

So just click on the sheet to take you to the printable page and then right click and 'save as' to your computer to print out.

Enjoy!

Dapper Dandy #4

I love these old dapper dans! I'm still working on the vintage fashion plates. Here's one you can save and print out for your own cards. I call him good ol' #4.

I removed the background and ran him through my graphics program which cleaned him up for you. He should print pretty good but it really depends a lot on your printer settings. Enjoy!

Spring Tulips

I love old fashioned flower prints and I love Spring. Nothing says Spring like tulips. These flowers look almost real. You just want to touch them. They are in the public domain but you really have to look hard to find them or you can purchase a cleaned up copy from online or in a collection of flowers on Etsy.

You can find a high resolution copy if you look in library archives online and do some research. Then just clean up a copy for yourself for free. Most people just don't go get the free copy because they don't know how to clean them up in a graphic program, re-size, re-color and print them off. It's OK to buy a copy from a graphic artist too. That's the easiest way to get them.

Aren't they pretty? 

Cute Couple

I've been cleaning up and cutting out more vintage little people. I just thought these were so pretty I had to cut them out. Aren't they romantic?

The King of Flowers

Yep, it's the rose. Most people would agree that roses are the most beautiful and popular flower of all. And they smell heavenly. You can find an abundance of vintage rose graphics out there to download and clean up.

This is one of my favorites. I love the bi-color roses.

Frilly Fair Maidens

I love these line drawings and hand colored fashion plates from the 1800's. The ladies are so frilly and over decorated like pieces of candy or delicate flowers. They are from the Romantic (1820-1850) fashion period and the early Victorian (1830-1890) period.

There is a beauty to them just because they were colored by hand before being distributed in magazines. They didn't have the fancy printing presses we have today.

Sunflowers

I'm making a card for my daughter's friend. Her favorite flowers are Sunflowers. So I got these vintage sunflowers online from a well known archive.

I cleaned them up a bit and resized them. Then I printed them out for the card I'm making. This is one of them. Aren't they pretty?

You can find a few of the original copyright free, high resolution sunflowers and other flower graphics and more at thegraphicsfairy.com . Just download them and clean them up and make them your own so you can print them out in a higher resolution than it shows here.

Web graphics are low grade and not good to print out. Print graphics are much larger in size so they can print out sharp.

I take copyright free and public domain (free) graphics and clean them up. Then I make a sheet out of them to print out for my own use. Here's a free page you can print and cut out for your own use. Enjoy these beautiful sunflowers!

Dapper Dandies

I am enamoured with the little vintage Godey, World of Fashion and LaMode fashion plates from the Lady's magazines from the 1800's. Anna Griffin's paper dolls got me started on tracking these little people down. I not only have a whole collection of my own now but I'm adding to my own growing vintage archives.

There are a bazillion of these out there that are royalty and copyright free so anyone can go get them and clean them up and make their own version. You just have to know how to work with a graphics program like PhotoShop or the GIMP. You can re-color, re-size, pose and re-create them to suit yourself as you please.

I don't make mine into paper dolls but I do clean them up and manipulate the dresses sometimes to make a whole dress where parts are missing or brighten the graphics up a lot, re-draw or recolor them. And I was delighted to find the fashion plates with dapper dandies in them. They are used as a prop to really showcase the ladies fashions in most of the ladies magazines but the men had their fashion style too so there are tons of fashion plates of just mens fashion. So there aren't as many of them as there are the ladies but I managed to find about half a dozen or so but I'm still finding more of them too. The trick to printing them off clean and sharp is to get them in high resolution and remove the background.

I found one that even has a dog! I love them and now I can make my cards with men and women saying snarky things - or sweet things. Can you imagine an anniversary card for someone made of these? Take the cane out of this one's hand and put a rose in it. He could be proposing or saying something sweet. I love them and I'll be making more cards inspired by these fashion plate dapper dandies from the 1800's! NOW IT'S A PARTY!