Art Nouveau Pop-up and some hints on finding Free Artwork

Today's card uses some of the work of Alphonse Mucha, a truly inspirational Czech artist of the Art Nouveau movement. If you want to learn more about him, there is lots of information on Wikipedia and a whole gallery of his images, all now out of copyright and freely printable, on Wikimedia Commons.

"Art Mystique"

The front of the card features a woman from a very famous travel poster "Monaco - Monte Carlo". All the women have been cut from printouts and shaped before attaching to the card. The backgrounds are made with distress inks, stamps, perfect pearls and lace.

"Inspiration Tree"

The trees are diecut from old cat food boxes and embossed with a woodgrain folder before decorating with distress inks and distress stickles. Only the trunks are attached to the card, leaving the branches hanging free. Tiny tags are inked and stamped with inspirational quotes before attaching to the branches. I love the way the branches form an arch above the woman's head in a form reminiscent of the Art Nouveau style.

"Pop-up!"

Tom tells me he like a card with a "wow" on the front, and a "WOW" inside. I hope this one does the trick! There are three separate pop-up elements and the two groups of people at the back are attached to the background with Pinflair dimensional glue to bring them away from the blue-green background.

"Ladies!"

The central figure in this group reminds me of my niece (hi Abs!). I just love the plate of chips amongst all the glamour :-).

Ingredients:

Sizzix Bigz XL pop-up tree

Sizzix Bigz Scallop pop-up

Sizzix Bigz Tiny Tabs and Tags

Spellbinders Nestabilities Labels

Distress Inks

Distress Stickles

Vintage Images by Alphonse Mucha from Wikimedia Commons

Adhesives: PVA, Pinflair Glue

Jump rings

Lace

Epilogue

Some time ago I was working on a card with some Graphic 45 stamps, and did some internet research wondering what colours would be good for trapeze artist costumes. I happened upon Wikimedia Commons which has thousands of copyright-free images, and came across a lot of the artwork upon which some of the Graphic 45 papers are based. If, like me, you like the papers but find them expensive, you can print off a lot of these images direct from Wikimedia and use them in your art comfortable in the knowledge that you are not breaking any copyright rules! I was surprised just how much of Graphic 45's "Le Cirque" artwork resembled real vintage circus posters such as this one, which you might like to compare to the artwork in the background on Graphic45's website here:

"Vintage Circus Poster from Wikimedia Commons"

Having discovered Wikimedia Commons, I carried on with my research. A lot of the images in the Graphic 45 "Steampunk Debutante" papers bear striking similarities to artwork by some well-known Art Nouveau artists, including Alphonse Mucha and Henri Privat-Livemont, and sadly I haven't noticed these artists being credited. If you're looking for good artwork to include on your cards, why not start with a trip to Wikimedia Commons and see what you can download for free?

Entered for the following challenge:
Gingersnap Creations - Last Century