Dear Subscriber, 
I feel as if I just finished writing the April newsletter, and now I'm writing one for May. My husband made a similar comment: "I just got used to writing 'April'..."
As usual, the year is flying by. My sister is certain we're going to just skip right over spring (haven't seen much of it yet) and move from winter to blistering summer. She may be right. Each time I think I can say goodbye to my winter sweatshirts for the season, the weather plays another trick and proves me wrong! Thus far I think I've worn short sleeves for one day (and not the whole day at that).
But if the sun is being reluctant to put in an appearance, or at least give us much warmth, at least we can sit back with a warm cup of tea and enjoy an earlier day, when roads were considerably muddier than now and all this wet weather meant that we weren't going to be able to plant our kitchen gardens. With blueberries on the market imported from Chile, that's not so much of an issue for most of us! (Although it does have a certain appeal...)
Here's what we have for you in May!
Visit http://www.victorianvoices.net/VT/issues/VT-1805.shtml to download this issue!
Or download it directly from DropBox:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/8r7xgwzoc306v3u/VT-1805.pdf?dl=0
LOVE TO COLOR? YOU'LL LOVE OUR NEW COLORING BOOK!
We're tickled pink (or with pinks) over our new Victorian-themed coloring book, A Victorian Floral Fantasy. If you love flowers and love to color, this is the coloring book for you! It brings you 40 elegant floral designs adapted from a host of Victorian sources, including textile patterns, architectural designs, wallpapers, and Victorian seed catalogs.
This is the perfect book for chilling out, kicking back, de-stressing, and just putting aside the cares of the day. Surround yourself with the colors and patterns of the Victorian garden, and let your imagination run wild.
I'm also tickled pink over having discovered, in Photoshop, how to create a web gallery - so you can preview nearly half of the book! Just visit http://www.victorianvoices.net/books/coloring.shtml to see this book and also a preview of our previous Victorian-themed book, Elegant Designs of the Ages. And again I want to take this opportunity to thank my sister for the fantastic cover; I think of myself as a pretty decent "colorist," but my jaw hit the floor when I saw what she did with my patterns! (That's a William Morris wallpaper, BTW, and I think Morris would have been pleased! Ironically, I think my sister sits in her Morris chair - yep, a genuine reclining Morris chair - when she colors...)
OUR FIRST CLIP-ART COLLECTION IS AVAILABLE!
We're also pleased to announce the publication of our very first Victorian clip art collection. (We hope it will be the first of many...) The Victorian Dogs Clip Art Collection offers dog-lovers more than 1300 images of dogs, including over 125 dog breeds, 50 full-color "ready to frame" prints from Cassell's Book of the Dog and Cassell's New Book of the Dog, a collection of high-resolution Landseer prints, Harrison Weir's dog illustrations from Chatterbox magazine, and much more.
I'm not going to run on about the virtues of this collection here; I'll limit my promotional meanderings to two things: (1) High resolution images and (2) virtually no usage restrictions. All the images are at least 300 dpi and most are 600 dpi - which means you aren't going to open this collection and see a bunch of tiny, 65KB files that aren't good for much of anything but viewing on screen. And we don't care what you use these for - personal, commercial, whatever - unlike some other collections that have a set of restrictions that runs on for over a page! (Partly because we actually know what "public domain" really means...) To find out more, and see our preview galleries (I went a bit crazy with my newfound prowess with the Web Gallery tool), visit http://www.victorianvoices.net/clipart/dogs.shtml .
Thank you all for being a part of the VictorianVoices.net family!
Happy Spring!
Your Intrepid Editor,
Moira Allen