The Victorian Treasury of Vintage Images - Sea Life

The beautiful sea life illustrations in this collection come from Victorian-era books on zoology, from the reports of explorers, and from academic journals documenting marine species around the world.

If you have used royalty-free image libraries, you know that you often see the same images again and again - they come from the same pool of illustrations repackaged by different publishers. To bring more variety to our craft projects, I went directly to the sources. I sifted through thousands and thousands of original pages. With the exception of a handful of vintage prints, the images in this collection are full color. I have selected only the illustrations that depict sea creatures and plants with both realism and artistic skill. I made sure every image is clear and sharp. I digitally isolated each one from its original background, placed it on white, and color-corrected to restore the original look. I left some illustrations intact in terms of color - for projects where you want that old-paper antique look.

In my own craft work, I use vintage illustrations for decoupage. If you layer multiple images in your decoupage project, you have to cut them out. Therefore, most illustrations I have selected are relatively simple in their outline and can be cut out without loss.

Besides decoupage, you can use these images for school projects, scrapbooking, junk journaling, and greeting card making. You can also collage them for many genres of mixed media art.

I hope you enjoy my book! Happy crafting, beautiful one!

Emily Silversmith