Belated Birthday Poe!

Life is full of intentions... good and bad.  So Poe's birthday was celebrated in January, and I started... but missing the blog hop deadline, it morphed into Other Innuendo

in her diaphanous mesh dress, and over-stated headdress.
And some digi beasties got in on the act, all dressed in their shiniest Lindy's warpaint

Whilst a Raven (at last! a Poe reference!), heat-embossed, clatters his shiny beak, and speaks that immortal line...

 And of course, the Cautionary note spelled out to Poe by the raven and actress...

Background includes Stencil Girl Tribal Leaves,  stamps from Carabelle which I can't find on thier web site, but got from here,  Andy Skinner's Birds and Bones, Blank Page Muse, digi stamp  Bizarre Beasties from Leigh SB Designs.  The two trees are Cheery Lynn dies, now known as My Makers Movement.

Hopefully your feathers have been ruffled thoroughly, and set you down another dark art path - do share!  We have Treats LOL

Spring forward

March Challenge winner is...

#4 from Crom's Cubby Hole!

We all loved your mixed media Spook triptych!

This is Asylum Anne's second month as a Stencil Girl Voice.  That meant she got the April Club stencils in January to create something in time to celebrate their release.
So... the draft test piece: some very white kiwiana 12x12 paper, the stencils, Carabelle's very long quelques notes de music and just for fun, LeighSB Design's Bizarre Beasties (digi stamp) in the corner.

It is Spring, and a rather bedraggled bird - stenciled onto a ripped up & dyed Egyptian Cotton sheet (tmi?) - suddenly realises he needs to refurbish his wardrobe in order to attract a mate?

Beautiful gaudy (diecut) glittery wings are order of the day. The top one painted with a Resene house paint test pot of glitter blue, then over it, heat embossed part of the stencil using Emerald Creek's Mardi Gras.  The other 2 were covers generously in pva glue, then glitter(red) and glass glitter (green) poured over.

Before working the new stencils, the first layer was bare tree trunks of September 2017 Club, using Lindy's Gang Steel shimmer Magicals mixed with pouring medium.  The second layer was Black birds in trees stencil using Michael deMeng's Warm Usszh recipe (quinacridone gold and a bit of van dyke brown paint)  After that the hearts and flowers of this month's stencil release were superimposed, one of the birds heat-embossed.  Those are real feathers sprouting from the tailor text.

And the animal/birds?  They're probably thinking back to the tale of Little Black Sambo, "Now who's the smartest tiger bird in the jungle"

Please share your own warped humour in art, your dark, your weird HERE

March 1 - New Month New Playtime!

Valentines - think pink, hearts, red roses, glitter... 

Think of the Commercial Pressure to buy and send someone a Valentine.

With February 14 well out of the way, 

the rest of the year we can be more genuine in expressing our affections.  

So, Dear Reader, We Love You, 

and wish you will remain our friends in The Dark Side of our HeArts

Pink... wicked Little Grumpie Cupid.  Hearts yep.  

Red roses - one, anyway, between the skull's teeth.  

Glitter... black floral glitter!  

And I thought I'd better "up-value" the 20 cent stamp 

on the previous post's envelope.

"Sentiment" by Leigh SB Designs

Cranial Caress from Delicious Doodles

Spellbinder scalloped hearts dies.

***

Well, well, speaking of a shadows,

I hope there is no one like this lurking:

Creepy, ehh? Clown from the Ike's Art and the background from the

Gecko Galz colored with Copics and black DI.

***

The only theme this month is Anything Goes Except Cute!!

Keep sharing your weird, your dark, your off-beat, 

your non-PC with us every month, with the linky for thIs month HERE:

An InLinkz Link-up

And remember, St Patrick's Day (17th March) is all about the Snakes!  Eeek!!!

You want a Valentine card as well???

OK, ok, rubber arm twisted.  Just because it's the last day of Leigh SB Design's My Dark Valentine hop.  You can have a card... AND an envelope!

A blank card made of kraft, sprinkled Paper Artsy Infusions and spritzed.  The card curled quickly, giving the 2-directional streaming

The inside I stamped the XXL Carabelle stamp, Steampunk Mechanique, and wrote a poem for it:

Valentine

When Cupid’s sharp arrow doth strike,

All thoughts of food are fled:

I am a sandwich short of a picnic,

A few noodles short of a chow mein!

In love and thus  blind.

No longer the brightest bulb in the box.

The lights are on, but I am not home:

Shipped but not delivered  - lost, so  lost for love.

Undelivered, Alack!  I am not the fastest ship in the fleet.

My heart  rends me a few keys short of a keyboard,

A few cogs short of the gear change

That would  bring together Toi et Moi

Cupid thou Nasty Cherub

I would change thine aim

But thou hast reft me of mine sanity,

Missing a few buttons on the remote,

A few keys short of a keyboard.

A few cogs short

In my heart.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And the front of the card:

The Cheery Lynn die, Hearts #2  has 3 different colours of embossing powder. The cogs were diecut from a juice carton, alcohol ink-treated.
Stencilgirl S271 Angel Circle, L157 city scape, Club 05-2017
Carabelle stamp set :Textes:  Zoom sur 1 souvenir.  Sorry I can't find it on their website, nor the one I bought it from.

As for the envelope... I hope it's got enough postage - that 20cent one better not be prophetic.

That Mocking bird that took out Poe last month is back, aiming at the cat???

Maybe there's more to it than that - an winged easter bunny with an egg-bomb?

Some love-sick boy getting his come-uppance?

 Zoom out, we want to see the whole thing to make our own minds up:

Can you see the postie daring to deliver this to anyone's letterbox???

Stencil Girl's Mixed Media Mail stencil's words pop up in serendipitous places, to comment.  A Silver Crow Creations rubber stamp simulates an Addressee.  Digi stamps include Delicious Doodles for the postage stamps (Cranial Caress and Samhain), Bloobel the Sick Boy and Kitteh, Ike's "Greece" is the building-courtyard scene.  Smeared Ink's Winged Grumpy and our hostess, Leigh SB Designs have the Oddleigh Mocking Bird, the egg, and the quote.

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Farewell to Poe

Last day of the Poe blog hop, and we lay the poor man to rest.  How?
Mwahahaha!!!!  With some of our hostess Leigh SB Designs' dodgy-digi characters!  Oooh I loved overhearing their conversations in this Journal page!!!

I thought he had a tougher stomach than that, given he was the Literary Master of Gothic mayhem.

After arranging & printing out the digis, they were coloured with Derwent Inktense pencils and watered in.  Then the joys of masking them to overstamp backgrounds with the help of Carabelle: their Collage: envolee d'oiseaux, and massive Mecanique Steampunk.  And half-hid, Crafty Individuals' Airmail Owl.  And if you're wondering, it's easier for me to have got all these rubber stamps from the West Island, at Time To Create, rather than out from Europe.

There may still be some hoppers "out there" - find them: ​

An InLinkz Link-up

Happy Birthday EA Poe - again!

What is Poe reknowned for?  Writing.  How do we know that?  Because his writings were published as books.  Where do we find books?  In a library.  How do we get to read them in our own time?  Borrow them from the library of course.  Is my questionable Librarian Past catching up with me?  Am I overdue????

You can't tell?

I'm not sure either, largely due to the weird date stamp of Andy Skinner.  According to his stamps, the book has been borrowed by Mr O'Neil, T Rope, and various other weirdly-named personages, including Mr Two Balloons - perhaps Monck Mason's alias?  Carabelle's creation et reve secret set gave me both the book title on the card, and the pointing hand. Leigh SB Designs provided the only digi stamp:  Poe I printed out, then smeared with interference paints for that subtle "je ne sais quoi" !

Keep hopping through the Poe blog hop:

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And Poe did write...

Not just about the Darling Lenore and that pesky raven, but about hot air balloon trips, pirate treasure, death and being buried alive...  and Creative Jumpstart 2018 has Birgit Koopsen making a little (accordian) book. Cover:

Stamps used:
Our cover Man, Ode to Poe - a digi from Leigh SB Designs
digi skull by Rick St Denis for Blank Page Muse
 "Dead Men...", top-hatted "raven", opened skull, flying skeleman, crackle (heat-embossed) are all Blank Page Muse
Wizard bookshelf (parts used twice) and Airshow, are from ButterSide Down
Background text from Seth Apter
Rabbit is Alpha Stamps.  Why?  Why not!  There would be plenty living in the graveyards - food for ravens perhaps?  The tags are from them as well.
And what with the last page, and the back cover, we know what Poe REALLY died of!

​

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Happy Birthday Edgar Allan Poe

Asylum Anne creeping out of the work overload and not sure she wants to face a world with Poe's imagination rampant.  But there's a blog hop celebrating Poe's birthday going on, so what's a girl to do - say she'll create nevermore???
Creative Jumpstart 2018 is also happening this month, and several of the classes are reminding us of collaging scraps of paper all over the place, that's what probably influenced the style of this tag:

There's a fabulous large stamp of Mermaids on the Rocks (no it's not cocktail hour here) over at Rubber Stamp Ave which a while ago I had inked up, then cut into triangles.  Handy now. random limbs across the tag.  Various other scraps of paper, and a Disney sticker of Aurora (they spelled it wrongly - should be "Lenore").  There's a Carabelle stamp, some coffee-dyed paper from a Takeaways order sheet, a Warning from a die's packaging et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.   AND from Leigh Snaith-Brunton, one of her new digi Poe stamps.

Join the hop here ​

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