Legacy Star Designs
Mixed Media
Volume 02
Mixed Media Volume 02 takes a turn from the monochrome austerity of Volume 01 and opens the door to color, whimsy, and a much wider cast of characters. Where the first volume stayed close to typography, postal ephemera, and gothic ornament, this one brings in monarch butterflies and pearl strands, a mushroom cottage visited by dragonflies, koi fish in lily pads, roses in a cowboy boot, a pink Vespa decorated with flowers, and a cluster of oyster mushrooms that look like they belong in a fever dream apothecary. The backgrounds continue the stamp and ephemera collage approach established in Volume 01, but the foreground art is original work — illustrations that also appear in dedicated collections like Koi and Aquatic, Mushroom Club, and Wallflowers, making this volume something of a greatest hits sampler before those collections go deeper.
The mood here shifts piece by piece — part vintage travel poster, part cottage garden, part tattoo flash sheet, part something you'd find pinned above a very interesting desk. The color palette varies more widely than anything in Volume 01, ranging from the warm amber and dusty rose of the butterfly piece to the deep indigo and gold of the koi, to the soft rainbow wash behind the mushrooms. What holds it together is the layered mixed media approach and the consistent use of original illustration over collage backgrounds — the same hand running through all of it, even when the subject matter changes completely.
Mixed Media -Volume 02, No. 01
Mixed Media - Volume 02, No. 01 The opener for Volume 02 sets the new tone immediately — warmer, softer, and considerably more alive than anything in the first volume. The background is the familiar decorative stamp collage, postal meters and arrival approval stamps layered into a warm cream and taupe field, with a large soft globe or vignette shape glowing through the center like a light source behind the paper. Decorative stamp illustrations featuring butterfly motifs appear in the lower portion, a nice bit of thematic reinforcement that keeps the background from feeling generic.
The original foreground art features Tiger Swallowtail butterflies — a species native to Texas and well at home here — rendered in warm amber and black, their distinctive wing markings visible even through the layered transparency of the composition. A strand of pearls arcs through the upper right, leading the eye toward a bouquet of roses in deep red and green that anchors the right side of the piece. The combination of butterflies, pearls, and roses gives this one a distinctly feminine, vintage glamour quality — less gothic cabinet of curiosities, more vanity table from a very good decade.
Mixed Media -Volume 02, No. 02
Mixed Media - Volume 02, No. 02 This one has the quiet confidence of a piece that knows exactly what it is and doesn't need to explain itself. The background layers apothecary jar illustrations, sheet music fragments, and Victorian newspaper ad copy behind a fine honeycomb mesh overlay that gives the whole surface a soft, gauzy texture — like looking through a screen door into a very charming garden. Dragonflies dart in from both sides of the upper margin, their iridescent blue bodies catching the light in a way that feels less like decoration and more like an actual visit.
The centerpiece is a mushroom cottage — a piece from the Mushroom Club collection making its mixed media debut — rendered in mossy greens and warm stone gray, surrounded by a sprawling garden of cream-colored daisy-like flowers that spill past the borders of the cottage and into the lower third of the composition. A small stained glass window glows faintly red at the upper story, and a tiny round window sits below it like a porthole. The whole thing feels genuinely lived-in, as if someone with very good taste and a tolerance for damp weather has been tending that garden for years. Charming is an understatement.
Mixed Media -Volume 02, No. 03
Mixed Media - Volume 02, No. 02 This one pulls from the Koi and Aquatic collection, bringing a variant of that original illustration into the mixed media framework. The background shifts away from postal stamps and takes on a more structured, almost bureaucratic quality — checklist forms, to-do lists, note templates, weekly planners, and "Wishing You All the Best" cards tiled across the surface in soft gray and black. A pocket watch appears in the upper right, and baroque ornamental flourishes anchor the corners, keeping the collage from feeling like an office supply catalog. The contrast between that very organized background and the fluid, living subject matter on top is one of the more interesting tensions in the volume.
The koi itself is rendered in warm amber and gold, its body curving through a field of translucent lily pads in soft sage green — the transparency of the pads giving the composition a layered, underwater quality without actually going dark or deep. The fish moves with the kind of unhurried grace that makes koi so visually satisfying, tail fanning out at the bottom, eye catching the light. The "Wishing You All the Best" text repeating in the background turns out to be a quietly perfect backdrop for this particular subject — koi are a traditional symbol of good fortune, and the piece lands that note without being heavy-handed about it.
Mixed Media -Volume 02, No. 04
Mixed Media - Volume 02 - No. 04 Texas doesn't do subtle, but this piece makes a case for restraint. The background continues the planner and checklist collage from the previous piece — to-do lists, monthly calendars, habit trackers, note templates, and "Wishing You All the Best" cards layered into a warm olive and taupe field, with ink splatter marks punctuating the left side and decorative ironwork scrolls framing the lower right corner. It's organized chaos with good bones.
The foreground is from the Wallflowers collection — a cowboy boot overflowing with roses and white blooms, rendered in deep amber and warm brown rather than the expected yellow. That's an intentional choice worth noting: yellow roses are the traditional Texas symbol, practically a state requirement, but they can tip into cliché fast. The red-leaning amber roses here feel more personal, less souvenir shop — Texas by way of someone who actually lives here rather than someone selling postcards about it. Pearl strands loop through the upper portion, roses appear loose in the upper left corner, and a stamped rose illustration anchors the lower left. The whole piece has a warm, unhurried quality, like a front porch in October when the temperature finally cooperates.
Mixed Media -Volume 02, No. 05
Mixed Media - Volume 02, No. 05 The background here makes its intentions known immediately — decorative hundred dollar bill illustrations tiled wall to wall in soft olive green, layered with memo forms, to-do lists, and weekly habit trackers, all of it sitting under a grid structure that gives the whole surface a very organized kind of wealth. Damask stamp illustrations in deep red anchor the left margin, a callback to Volume 01's color language showing up here like a cameo. The message is clear: this scooter goes places, and it does so comfortably.
The foreground is a pink Vespa-style scooter traced in Paint Shop Pro 7.1 — a program old enough to have opinions and reliable enough to still be earning its keep — decorated with cream-colored roses and daisy blooms nestled into the headlight and wheel wells like a very stylish flower delivery vehicle. The line work is clean and confident, the pink body sitting soft against the green-tinted money background in a color combination that shouldn't work as well as it does. There's something cheerfully unbothered about this piece — a flower-covered scooter parked in front of a wall of cash, completely at ease with both.
Mixed Media -Volume 02, No. 06
Mixed Media - Volume 02, No. If number three was the quiet koi, this one is the full statement. The background stays in the same planner and note template territory — "You Are My Sunshine" headers, order forms, weekly schedulers, and dot grid paper layered into a warm taupe field, with ink splatter marks in black punctuating the right side. It's a familiar backdrop by now, but this piece fills it so completely that the background becomes almost incidental.
This koi, also from the Aquatic and Koi collection, arrives with considerably more drama than its Volume 02 predecessor. The illustration is bold and graphic — closer to traditional Japanese tattoo flash in its approach — with the fish rendered in deep gold and black, scales individually detailed, eye wide and expressive with a teal iris that gives it an almost cartoon personality in the best possible way. Deep indigo and teal water swirls surge around the body, and pink cherry blossoms are tucked into the composition like punctuation. This one fills the frame completely, tail to snout, and it knows it. The color palette here — gold, navy, teal, pink — is the most saturated and confident in the volume so far, and it earns every bit of it.
Mixed Media -Volume 02, No. 07
Mixed Media - Volume 02, N. 07 The closing piece of Volume 02 has a specific concept behind it — a kitchen lab aesthetic, the kind of space where apothecary jars line the shelves, handwritten notes cover every surface, and something interesting is definitely growing on the counter. The background layers Victorian newspaper ad copy, cursive script, alphabet specimens, apothecary bottle illustrations, and decorative flourishes in red over a soft rainbow wash of color — yellow, green, teal, and lavender bleeding through the left side like light through a stained glass window, or possibly a very cheerful science experiment in progress.
The mushrooms — from the Mushroom Club collection — are the most three-dimensional, photorealistic elements in the entire volume, a cluster of oyster-style mushrooms rendered with enough depth and shadow to look like they actually belong on a kitchen counter rather than a flat surface. They anchor the right side of the composition, growing upward with quiet determination while the handwritten text and jar illustrations carry on around them. It may be the least favorite in the collection, but it's doing something none of the others attempt — playing a realistic foreground element against an illustrative background, and the contrast is genuinely interesting even if the overall piece doesn't quite land the way the others do.