Paper-Paisleys Art Adventures: CELEBRATING POE

Hello Saturday and hope it was a good TGIF!

Seems like I just blogged and that was on Monday! Where does my time go?

I have another spread in my Puns and Roses Glue Book to share with you today, so that's where my time has gone this week. This is the 2nd of 3 spreads that began as one idea. As I was creating this one celebrating The Master of Halloween Macabre Edgar Allan Poe, I was remembering back to my childhood when I was introduced to Poe at my local Saturday morning movie theater Kiddie Show, watching all of those 1960's Vincent Price movies based on Poe's stories.

Years later when I took a graduate course in American literature reading Poe, I breezed through it because I'd absorbed so much from those movies that reading him was fun. I'm planning to do a spread about all that at a later date in my Wake Me When It's Over all-about-me-themed art journal. For my spread here, though, I dealt solely with Poe wordplay as a way to celebrate him at t(HIS) time of year. Because, really, who DOESN'T associate Halloween with Poe?

My spread began with a 12x12 piece of Karen Foster scrapbook paper from 2004, cut down to fit my book. I bordered it using some Tim Holtz Halloween washi tape.

I used a Sakura clear/white glaze pen to cover the spider. Here you can see it changes color when the light hits it just right. The image of Poe and his signature is a Free Vintage DigiStamp collage sheet image, and I've stamped "nevermore" with a Collage Stuff rubber stamp and then inked the edge around in black. The "Poetic Licenses of Humor" is wordplay akin to what they do on Wheel of Fortune where they mash up two phrases: mine combines Poetic License with Sense of Humor. (And, you get why I used POEtic, right? heehee.) The red blood is a Martha Stewart border punch and the gothic border under Poetic Licenses is a Fiskars border punch.

For this spread, I used only one "real" (rubber) stamp. I used digital stamps, collage sheet images and images I found on the internet, all printed out on my LaserJet in grey scale at 600dpi on coated presentation paper. I like how it takes alcohol markers and direct-to-paper inking. Here you can see one of the digital stamps (Poe Bust by Ike's Art) which I colored with my Promarkers. Next to it is a Teesha Moore collage sheet image. I created the background circles with a finger sponge dauber and dye inks from my use-it-up box. The green October Afternoon alpha stickers got a workout and I got a lot of them used. More wordplay: POEriginal for Original and POEtender for Pretender. Of course, when I'd finished these, I also thought of ImPOEster (Imposter) and CoPOEcat (Copycat). I may handprint those later on the image like the nonsense words that are already on there, so I can remember them.

Ok, this section makes me chuckle. I found a file on my computer hard drive labelled Poe Graphics...stuff I'd saved here and there, including the caricature on the left and the Avalon Ballroom poster for Country Joe and the Fish. There really is quite a bit of Poe-inspired art out there. Loved how inking the poster made the words stand out more legibly!

I really like this Ike's Art digital stamp, Candle Poe. I colored and fussy-cut and paired him with quoted lines from The Raven (internet graphic) and a USPS Poe stamp from my stash. I wrote Celebrating Poe with Gold Shadow and Silver Sakura gel pens.