Vintage Art Appreciation: Camelias, Amaryllis, Hyacinth and Violets in Ornamental Pots by Johan Laurentz Jensen

Camelias, Amaryllis, Hyacinth and Violets in Ornamental Pots on a Marble Ledge, 1836
by Johan Laurentz Jensen (1800 - 1856)

The best way to not feel hopeless is to get up and do something.
Don’t wait for good things to happen to you.
If you go out and make some good things happen,
you will fill the world with hope,
you will fill yourself with hope.
― Barack Obama

Hope
Smiles from the threshold of the year to come,
Whispering 'it will be happier...'
― Alfred Tennyson

I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.

Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're Doing Something.

So that's my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody's ever made before. Don't freeze, don't stop, don't worry that it isn't good enough, or it isn't perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.

Whatever it is you're scared of doing, Do It.

Make your mistakes, next year and forever.
― Neil Gaiman

Free Vintage Bird Clipart for Cardmaking, Collage or Scrapbooking: Robins on Icy Branches with a Rose in Full Bloom Amid Winter Snow

When we love, we always strive to become better than we are.
When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

Digitally restored and enhanced antique postcard from the early 1900s with an illustration showing a pair of robins percehed on snowy branches in wintertime. Miraculously, a marvelous pink rose is still blooming amid the winter cold.

Free to use in your cardmaking, collage or scrapbooking projects. You can download the high-res 6" x 4" @ 300 ppi JPEG without any words or watermark here.


From my personal collection of ephemera. All digital scans by FieldandGarden.com are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Please credit and link back to FieldandGarden.com as your source if you use or share this work.

Vintage Art Appreciation: A Winter Woodland by Karl Rosen

A Winter Woodland
by Karl Rosen (1864 - 1934)
The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.
― John Muir

The places of quiet are going away, the churches, the woods, the libraries. And it is only in silence we can hear the voice inside of us which gives us true peace.
― James Rozoff

Here is your country. Cherish these natural wonders, cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and romance as a sacred heritage, for your children and your children's children. Do not let selfish men or greedy interests skin your country of its beauty, its riches or its romance.
― Theodore Roosevelt

An English wood is like a good many other things in life-- very promising at a distance, but a hollow mockery when you get within. You see daylight on both sides, and the sun freckles the very bracken. Our woods need the night to make them seem what they ought to be--what they once were, before our ancestors' descendants demanded so much more money, in these so much more various days.
― Gertrude Atherton, The Bell in the Fog & Other Stories