Poe-O-Lantern

My dearly departed Poe,  portrayed on a pumpkin.

Those little carving kits are rediculous! $5 for two tiny blades that break almost immediately? Come on! I broke the first blade just sawing a hole in the top, but by going rediculously slow, managed to make the detail blade last until the last sliver. Next year I’ll pony up for real carving tools.

However, that little spatula for gutting is fabulous – couldn’t believe how well that worked. Saving that!

Closeup

I fear Nappy will have neon poop from eating pumpkin slivers that dropped while carving. I had to stop the little bugger from knawing on the lid – he loves it!

Annual Halloween Poem – Lupine

 

Lupine

By Noctavia Poe

10-24-2011

Summer nights are  shade and shadow–

Brief relief from brutal day;

But winter nights lie heavy, cloaklike,

Velvet, fur-lined, sweeping, fey.

At dusk the sky goes gray and silver

Crows gather croaking in the trees

And the whispers of the withered grasses

Bring the Sun King to his knees

Cold streams trickling through the rock beds

Like church bells call the deer to drink

Enraptured by their own reflection

In polished mirror pools of ink.

Moonrise sets the young wolves howling

Tales of blood and battle scars

Midnight is a black wolf yawning

With sharp white teeth like shattered stars

Until the dawn, may dark embrace me

and hold me bliss drunk in its arms

My human husk form finally cast off

Fealty pledged to Night’s dark charms.

Poe Tin Message Board

Would you believe this used to be a cookie tin with a nauseatingly cute teddy bear on it? However, I really liked the black lid and stripes.

First, I sanded the tin and faux rusted it. When it was dry, I printed a picture of Poe off the web onto vintage looking script scrapbook paper and decoupaged it over that bear.

I decoupaged a raven (of course!) on the lid and added a well worn knob.

The magnets are tin wood squares decoupaged with raven and black cat scrapbook paper with a craft magnet glued to the back. Some of the chips had warped and had a decided curve, which I really like. As you can tell, I use a lot of scrapbook paper for someone who doesn’t scrapbook!

“Haunted by Edward Gorey” Assemblage

When SEHA (Society of Eclectic Halloween Artists) listed “Haunted Houses” as its September theme challenge, I immediately knew I wanted to attempt a dollhouse/diorama/assemblage “haunted” by Edward Gorey characters. I adore Edward Gorey. I can’t imagine working in an office that doesn’t have the child in bed with the huge lizard reared up on the footboard captioned “Donald imagined things”  on the wall, and I’m equally enamoured of Neville (who died of ennui) from the Gashlycrumb Tinies.  I also adore his lithe black cats, big black dogs, and ballerinas. 🙂 In violation of all copyright laws, since I’m keeping this one for myself, I copied pages from books and ravaged my past year page-a-day desk calendars for standees and cutouts. It doesn’t show in any of the pics, but there’s a framed picture of Gorey himself on the drawing room wall.

The base is a distressed wooden box bottom topped with a crumbling  book cover roof and finial steeple. I only used half the cover because the sides covered the house halfway down, so I cracked one side to form a roof. The cover deteriorated so badly from handling I glued a square of denim to the underside with Sobo glue to strengthen it. I really like the ravaged effect.

The wallpaper is scrapbook paper, the column is plastic wedding cake tier support, and the chair was doll furnitured gessoed white.

The gables are wooden triangles from a set of children’s building blocks. Note the unloved child leaping from the roof. Other children languish in the attic.

The back of the house is a churchyard scene with Petunia, the scourge of bicyclists’ ankles, the crow warning “beware of this and that”, and a bat crossing a plastic disc road trash moon.

The churchyard extends onto one side where Dracula and Mina spend their days in a coffin, topped with a contented cat.

The other side features a round “window” made from a broken box fan dial, gamepiece house number, and a napkin ring doghouse.

Definitely my most ambitious, aggravating, and fun project!

Redneck Voodoo Doll

Waylon Henry Forde began life as a sketch after watching Kris Kristofferson in the movie: Bloodworth. The vindictive son obsessed with spells and curses was the inspiration for a redneck voodoo doll pillow to enter in SEHA’s August Theme Challenge: Ornament.  I’d love to show the sketch, but I scanned it as a bitmap and wordpress won’t accept that type of file. Actually, that’s pretty typical, as everything so far has been an obstacle to overcome! I broke my sewing scissors sawing through jean seams, put the zipper in wrong the first time, and constantly broke thread sewing heavy denim. Don’t even get me started on stuffing – polyester stuffing is SLICK! As soon as you get one tiny hair point filled, it slides right back to the middle, giving Waylon a trademark beer belly. However, now that he’s done and my fingers have stopped bleeding from needle sticks and pin pricks, and the eyestrain headache from threading tiny-eyed needles is gone, I really like the little guy. His mouth does unzip to insert a blessing or curse, and he has 3 hearts to change with his mood – red (passion), black (dark intent), and blue (sorrow). Oh, and a bit of carpenter crack, too.

He’s available for a week on ebay (sellername: pinkshudders).

Paper Mache Goblin

A few weeks ago my ebay Halloween group held a goblin challenge. That same week my truck broke down in the campus parking lot in triple digit heat and spent the next two weeks in a shop. The paper mache goblin I had started after seeing Dan Reeder’s  (Dan The Monster Man) fabulous dragon videos on YouTube took a backseat to worrying/begging money until I got my truck back and began again.

Here he is in his striped underwear (oxford shirt torn in strips and dipped in white glue). His frame is crumpled paper wrapped in masking tape. His wings are cardboard cutouts wrapped in shirt fabric and his teeth and tongue are Fimo. I decided to sacrifice my toaster oven baking it, since it blackens my bagels anyway. It burns Fimo too… sigh.

After a lot of gluing down edges that stuck up as they dried, I painted him with three coats of neon green, pink, and yellow.  Note to self: Use a WHITE shirt next time; stripes are hard to cover.  He looked so awful I seriously considered tossing him but decided since he was hideous anyway, to thin some brown paint and give him a quick wash and wipe. I was stunned how much difference that extra step made!

I added doll shoes and a bird’s egg from an old wreath and sat him in a bird’s nest for pictures. I picked up the bird’s nest walking home from the grocery one sweltering morning while my truck was in the shop, and of course, the minute I sat it down outside it rained, pretty much disintegrating it.

Available on ebay under sellername: pinkshudders.

Topiary Deer

 

After Christmas last year, I picked up one of those mini-light wrapped iron yard deer off the curb. Stripped of its lights (a REALLY time consuming project, even with a good wire cutter), it makes a great topiary frame for my morning glory and butterfly vines. Just string fishing line from the pot and the vines will climb it!

Trash to treasure – my favorite type of decor!

 

 

Gypsy Magic assemblage

Another SEHA (Society of Eclectic Halloween Artists) challenge entry– Subject: Gypsy Magic. Someone posted a tirade accusing the group of continuing the cliche fortune telling thieving happy dancing gypsy before the first entry was even posted, which took a lot of the fun out of it, but I entered anyway. Most of what I enjoy in life is fiction and myth – I refuse to let grim reality destroy what enjoyment I get making art. Trying to figure out how to attach some of the elements is aggravating enough without the aggravation of political correctness, as if that weren’t a myth in itself!

The assemblage is two boxes nailed together – a wedge shaped organizer of some sort, with a drawer on top. I was determined to use a crystal ball of some sort, so I affixed a glow-in-the-dark vintage “Magic Eye” ball (like the black Magic 8 ball toys of the 70s) so that it hovered above a clear acrylic jewelry display hand. Instead of the tea leaves in a teacup, I put a nest and a bird. Since gypsys are often outsiders, by choice or not, I have used the goat to symbolize the gypsy and sheep for the gadje (non-gypsies). On the side is an altered board book such as a gypsy girl might make with pierced plastic pennies and charms. The walls are decorated with palmistry charts, old maps and astrological charts. I’m about 50% happy with it – will probably peel off some of the paper and add other elements as I come across them.

Faithless Lover Flown spellbox

I’ve always been fascinated by witches – not so much the black cat and cauldron type, but the idea of a lone woman dancing in the moonlight in a clearing in a deep dark wood, who creates her own spells from her own imagination with no connection to any formal branch of The Craft. This spellbox, created for SEHA’s April challenge – Spells and Potions – is the sort of thing that witch would do if she had been abandoned by a lover she refuses to let go. The spell is a visual art piece accompanied by a handwritten spell/poem.

I tore off some of the embossed metal decor and replaced it with an old dictionary page stamped with the word FAITHLESS. Inside, I have placed a playbill from the 1930s entitled “And Billy Disappeared”, a vintage photo of her lover, a paper mache heart covered with tulip petals pierced with a long thorn, a perfume bottle with a drop of “blood” (red ink) and a vial with a lock of hair (actually a snippet of tail from a Bryer’s horse figurine). The other side has a wooden silhouette poppet of Billy affixed to a coffin with real bluebird wings, courtesy of my murderous cats.  Currently on ebay; but after the challenge will be transferred to etsy.

The poem is handwritten on old paper and tied with a black satin ribbon.

Faithless lover, though you’ve flown

Your soul and spirit I still own.

It matters not how far you flee—

I will never set you free.

With locust thorn I’ve pierced your heart

Like mine was pierced by Cupid’s dart.

Now only Death’s grim scythe can sever

Two hearts my spell has nailed together.

My love’s a burden you must bear—

Yours to carry everywhere—

City, stable, steamboat, town—

When you rise up, when you lie down.

From others’ lips my voice you’ll hear

From others’ eyes my green eyes peer.

Every woman that you see

Turns your straying thoughts to me.

Your hair so black, your blood so red

Will bind your body to my bed,

Till you return, or till you die,

None other’s touch will satisfy.

It matters not how far you roam

You’ll have no peace till you come home.

Mine forever you will be;

You’ll never get away from me.

Delta Dawn Hat

I’ve always loved hats in general, and especially top hats, huge Victorian hats, and flowered and veiled hats. I love redoing thrift store hats.  YES, I DO wear them, and YES, people DO stare. Let them! If they want to dress boring, that’s their problem. 🙂

This one was grey straw or raffia I painted with two coats of grey acrylic paint and trimmed with a faded thrift store floral garland. I love the faded flowers – I’m calling it my Delta Dawn hat.