The Halloween Tree

 One of my favorite books is The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury. I have always wanted to make one: a Halloween Tree or a Pumpkin Tree but it seemed too far out of my skill set. I have tried to draw them or make one on a 2-D canvas but they never quite satisfied my vision.

I have come very close this year. I won't bore you with a lot of details on this one. I took a stick and added wire and washi tape to make extra branches. I added lights. I added pumpkins and small paper cut details. The base is upcycled from something that was being trashed. The boys are paper dolls from Tim Holtz and the old man is a cut out rubber stamp image. That old man is Moundshroud carved by hand by Jackbear Stamps. This image is taken from the 1st edition of The Halloween Tree that was illustrated by Joseph Mugnaini.

I took photos with a piece of my artwork behind it as well as a simple "bare" background. (The original artwork is called "Moonshine".) Some details show up better against the dark, some better against the light. Enjoy the photos.

Remember what I told you? It lights up.

"...a mob of smiles shine down on thee from the gourds hung high on the Halloween Tree."

-Wy

Ghosts in the Graveyard

 Here's a favorite project of mine this year! My original idea, the first idea, was to make Edgar Allan Poe's gravesite atop a stack of books. Poe may or may not be buried in this little graveyard but I kept the idea of using a stack of books. It's the closest I've gotten to doing another altered book in a long time so I'm counting it as a goal accomplished! 

Ghosts in the Graveyard:  A couple years ago I set up a party scape with a stack of books with titles that I thought reflected the Halloween mood. I had about 5 or 6 of them and I thought at the time of attaching them all together to make a permanent arrangement. Since I never got around to it, I decided to take from that stack and use a few for this display.

I won't take you through every little step but I'll try to point out a few things through the photos of the finished project. I relied heavily on items from Tim Holtz's Halloween lines of Ideaology. These are a variety of items some from my stash; some I bought brand new this year. My vision for the graveyard really took off when I realized the Metal Fence fit "just so" on the top book I was using for my base.

This photo gives a good depiction of the graveyard. I covered the book with a sheet of  paper from Tim Holtz's Abandoned stash. (So happy that I finally got my hands on this paper stash! It is mesmerizing how much pattern and color is in it. Truly a sheet for any project.) Those rocks are some kind of foam bead that I had in my stash and never used. Its a good filler when you're attaching large items with texture paste as it fills in the gaps. I just spread on the texture paste and lightly pressed these into it. Mummy cloth adds a bit of light fog around the edges and the brush bottle trees in the back were sprayed with several different shades of ink to fit my color palette. While I used some Evergreen Bough, Shaded Lilac, and Gathered Twigs (Distress stain), my main color was Whale Watch Blue from Lindy's. This cold blue-gray color was exactly what I wanted to reflect a foggy chilly Halloween night. I sprayed the texture paste and foam beads with this color and the mummy cloth to match.

I added details to the tombstones in the front. I placed a creepy eye on one and set a skull beside the other. I added small ruby rhinestones into the skulls eyes, the only deviation from my washed out color palette. If you look closely at the gravestones in the back row, just before the trees, they may seem familiar. I used old chess pieces. I took the black ones and gave them a little coat of gray paint then added little splotches of black to make them seem old and weathered. I colored a pearl with purple alcohol ink to set atop the rook to resemble a gazing ball.

I added the ghosts after staring at it awhile and deciding I wanted a vertical element. It was feeling very "horizontal"...your eye tracked left and right but not up and down. The ghosts helped with that and I LOVE these ghosts. They remind me of the ones in The Nightmare Before Christmas that fly over during the Pumpkin Song.

The advantage of using a stack of books is that books can be carved out. So I carved out the bottom book just enough to fit in the smallest of vignette boxes. Now because no one was going to be opening this book, I could make the cuts sloppy and just hide the edge with paper. The zombie hand (that I had to buy as it came in the pack with the tombstones) made a perfect drawer pull. (Though I admit that at a distance, this zombie hand looks like it's giving me the finger!) The items in the drawer are all that remains of the Edgar Allan Poe idea. I thought, "if I went through a secret drawer in Poe's office, what might I find?" None of these items are glued down so they can be removed from the drawer and examined. I wonder what the skeleton key unlocks?

So what's the best part about this project? It lights up!

I hid a string of purple tiny lights around the perimeter of the graveyard. That was the point of the mummy cloth, really, to hide the lights. While the cloth didn't diffuse the lights as much as I would have liked, it looks way better in person that it does in these photos. I love how the ghosts practically disappear in the darkness.

 Let's talk about those lights for a minute. When I saw that these colored lights were available, I immediately bought 2 sets. I had not invested in the regular tiny lights because I thought they'd be hard to incorporate into vignette boxes...you'd have to drill a hole in the back to put the wire through...I'm not that handy. But knowing that there was no "back" to this project...no walls so to speak; it would be relatively easy to rig the string of lights. The battery pack sits in it's own little paper box that is attached to the top book as shown. I used a whole strand of lights and taped it down with some washi tape that was reinforced with collage medium. That held the wire down so that I could then cover them with the stained mummy cloth and glue the cloth down around the lights to also keep them in place. I think I now want to add lights to everything!

I have added this scene to my newly created "Halloween nook" in my craft space and it will stay up year round along with many of my other altered projects. 

Thanks for hanging with me to the end!

Stay safe out there! Wear your mask, wash your hands, social distance! Yes, it's important.

-Wy

She was Peculiar

 I did this vignette box after seeing one finished on a Tim Holtz FB Live. I so wanted to make my own that it is this very project that forced me to purchase Halloween items I did not have in my stash. (Oh the hardship!) EDIT: The inspiration was done by Emma Williams from 2019. It didn't look like I remembered it and that's probably for the best. Her project can be found at Tim Holtz' blog under "2019 ideaology Halloween". 

Not much to report on this project. It's an ode to Tim Holtz and his wonderful Halloween ideaology line. The idea was not my own. Enjoy the photos!

In other news, I have not yet done ONE prompt for Inktober(TM). I have adjusted my goals accordingly. My goal now stands at getting any 5 of the prompts done this month. Will keep you posted.

Stay Safe.

-Wy

Dearly Departed

 

It seems almost fitting that I begin my October posts with this shadowbox of a graveyard scene. I recently lost my cat friend of 3 years and I see that this project I made has a cat in it. sigh.

Anyway...I decided that this year was the year to use the stash of vignette boxes and shadowboxes I have accumulated. It's only around Halloween and Christmas that I am inspired to make anything of them so I wanted to use as many as possible. I tried not to buy too many new things for them but I couldn't help myself with a few elements that just added to my ideas. 

The bottom half of the box depicts a small graveyard scene with tombstones, an urn, and black cat. The upper half of the box has a baseboard frame with a vellum scene inside it. I used collage elements to add a bit of detail to the frame as it seemed rather empty on it's own.

I was greatly inspired to add lights to things this year. So that was the main purpose of this project. I was experimenting with working with the tiny lights (Tim Holtz; Ideaology). When adding lights to things, you need to plan ahead if you want to conceal the "wiring" and have a place for the battery compartment. Sometimes, it's too much planning for me when I just want to sit down and make a project.

I selected this shadowbox to use because it already had some open tabs in it. (From Alpha Stamps, the tabs are meant to hold shelves within the box. I left the shelves out to utilize the holes.) This allowed me to put the battery box on the back without having to worry about drilling a hole or something. I made the little holder for the battery out of thick cardstock.

 It's hard for me to get a good photo of it all lit up as when I dim the lights, you can't really see the elements. (I'll try to improve for future projects. Hint, hint.) The purple tiny lights are much more diffuse and light up the vellum scene with a wonderfully eerie glow.

I'm not sure I'm "in love" with this piece but it was fun to make. I do like the vellum scene, not so much the collage I did on the frame. Certainly it's a cool display on my book shelves. 

I will be posting inconsistently this year. No set structure or dates for new posts. I'm winging it as we all have during 2020; why should October be different? Follow my Facebook page to keep abreast of new posts and projects. I will also be sharing any Inktober(TM) prompts that I attempt. (Just a note that I don't plan on completing it this year. I'm already off to a bad start on Day One and it's a prompt I don't consider too challenging. Ugh.)

So the word for this October will be Inconsistent. 

Hang in there wherever you are. Wear your mask, social distance, and vote!

-Wy

"Here in the silence, dark and deep, I offer you eternal sleep." Love ya, Cloudy. RIP 9/27/2020

The Wiccapedia

Halloween is about the only time of year I get the urge to do assemblage, or work in 3-D, like making boxes, vignettes, or other décor pieces.

I'm not sure what to do with them after I create them as I have limited display space. So if you haven't been to my Etsy Store, be sure to drop by as many of these artworks will be for sale.

This year I pulled out a Tim Holtz Configuration book. If you are unfamiliar with it, it is a hollow book/box with several compartments within. It is blank and made of a chipboard material. The compartments can be removed and re-configured. It was the number, shape, and size of these compartments that inspired my idea.

The Wiccapedia:   A spell book seemed too common place and I wasn't sure how to interpret that into a 3-D type medium. My idea came about as I was playing with the various configurations of the compartments in the book-box. I realized I generally had 4 "areas": large, medium, small, and 3 squares. I knew I wanted to add my witches into the large compartment with a woodland setting (very traditional). I thought about the many forms of "witches" beyond that traditional stereotype. After all, alchemists were practically witches, trying to turn iron to gold. And alchemists led into the modern day mad scientist who bends physical laws to defy nature. Of course, voodoo is just another language of witches, really, with curses and zombies. So this became the book. The 4 forms of a witch and what better title that the all-encompassing "Wiccapedia". I'll chime in a few details but enjoy the photos. It was challenging to get good ones with the weird reflections I was getting off of glass jars and such.

Since I didn't have enough letters to spell my title, I had to be a bit creative. Who doesn't want an eye staring out from the cover of their book? 

I also added a key and a little dangle pendent of amethyst that I have been holding for the perfect project. I painted the entire book/box black and then added highlights of Inka Gold (gold color). I also used this gold to color the "pages".

This is the configuration I settled on but it can be moved about on a whim. The pumpkin is a little too wide and it prevents the book from closing flat but I don't mind it. I'm not certain if at some point I will add something to the inside cover as I like it as it is. That paper reminds me of the inside of vintage books.
Here are the compartments:

The Witches:  (This one compartment is what I really wanted to make.) A couple of witches casting spells out in the woods late at night. Maybe they're waiting on the rest of their coven, or perhaps a tardy sister. Either way, they already have the cauldron boiling. A stray black cat seems to have taken an interest in their experiments. The pumpkin awaits a carving to light their way out of the woods. They hear the approach of footsteps. Is it their sister or some ambitious Scot?

The Mad Scientist:  In this day and age of fake news and fake science, I was hesitant to add him. Science is fact, truth, proof. But the mad scientist is indeed a sign of our times. He takes scientific fact proven by tested methods and twists them...perverts them to his own imaginative design. He mingles science with magic in hopes of greatness. He is a classic character of Halloween fright.

The Alchemist:  The three small boxes are the shelves of the Alchemist. His precious bottles of potions, ingredients, and various concoctions fill every nook and cranny. His books are old but cherished. He ponders the power of life through the eyes of his skulls and swears the spirits answer him when he questions his methods. Perhaps, he is getting close to his ultimate goal as his familiar frog guards his precious golden potion.

Voodoo Witch:  The only trace that the Voodoo Witch left behind was this doll full of pins. Hand sewn and frayed, who knows who this unfortunate soul is? One can only wonder where the last pin would have gone had the witch not been in a hurry to leave. No doubt she has a zombie or two to raise tonight.

Maybe it's best to shut the Wiccapedia for now. I wouldn't want too much to escape.

Have a great day!
Remember to join me every Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday for the month of October to enjoy more Halloween projects!
-Wy
"Ride with the moon in the dead of night."