Poe-etic Smeared and Smudged Member Blog Hop

This month on the Smeared and Smudged Forum we are celebrating everything Edgar Allen Poe, and our August member blog hop is no exception. The challenge was to create and share something inspired by one of Poe's poems, and as promised I am back with a project to show.

If you don't yet know what the S&S Forum is, why not swing by and take a look? Smeared and Smudged is an online community of rubber stampers and crafters who enjoy using alternative, gothic, edgy, and unique stamps in their designs. Although our focus is mainly along those lines, we embrace and respect all styles of art and would love to have you join in!

Also, I just must mention because I am too excited to hold it in...we have started signups for our 4th Annual 31 Days of Halloween!! We already have lots of participants and would love to have even more, so please be sure to read about it and perhaps join the fun! If you don't know what 31 Days is and you love Halloween or Day of the Dead, you simply must come take a look! You can find all the info HERE.

Okay, now that that is out of the way, I will share my Poe-etic project with you. It was difficult narrowing down to just one poem, but the poem that I ultimately chose to use is Spirits of the Dead. 

Thy soul shall find itself alone

'Mid dark thoughts of the grey tomb-stone--

Not one, of all the crowd, to pry

Into thine hour of secrecy:

Be silent in that solitude

Which is not lonliness--for then

The spirits of the dead who stood

In life before thee are again

In death around thee-- and their will

Shall overshadow thee: be still.

The night--tho' clear--shall frown--

And the stars shall look not down,

From their high thrones in the heaven,

With light like Hope to mortals given--

But their red orbs, without beam,

To thy weariness shall seem

As a burning and a fever

Which would cling to thee for ever.

Now are thoughts thou shalt not banish--

Now are visions ne'er to vanish--

From thy spirit shall they pass

No more--like dew-drop from the grass.

The breeze--the breath of God--is still--

And the mist upon the hill

Shadowy--shadowy--yet unbroken,

Is a symbol and a token--

How it hangs upon the trees,

A mystery of mysteries!---

For my project I chose to do a shadow box shrine on canvas. I took apart, altered, and re-assembled an old tiny shadow box for the main piece. It uses a bunch of paint and distress ink on the actual box, as well as the Grave Scene 2 from Smeared Ink's Holy City set, some 3-D birds that were painted and mounted, burlap, moss, and some dried flowers from my garden. You can't really tell from the pictures, but the graves are fussy cut and layered 4 times, and the birds are both "floating", neither on the back or on the glass.

The box is also embellished with metal wings and crown. On the sides of the shrine I have written out the words of the poem, and on the top the title and E.A.Poe, just in case it comes across someone who doesn't recognize the poem. The words on the front of the box are from the last line.

The canvas background actually uses a technique called cracked plaster on burlap. I have a tutorial, half of which I uploaded a while back into our Mixed Media University group on S&S. I had some difficulty loading the last video, but promise to have it up very soon!!(hides head in shame for taking too long). I've also used a metal tassel embellishment and a bit of twine.

*click for larger pics

I am not quite sure if this is complete. It feels a little unfinished to me, but I decided to leave it as-is for now and come back to it later to see. I don't want to overwhelm the meaning of the box by adding a bunch of crap to the canvas, but who knows. Hopefully later on I will have a fresh perspective, and I'm also open to opinions so feel free to tell me what you think in a comment.

So there you have it, now it's time for you to hop through this month's member blog roll to view the amazing talent! I know I can't wait to see what these awesome stampers have up their sleeves for the Poe-etic hop! Be sure to leave some love on their bloggies as well, and I will see you soon with another project.

Terra <---(that's me)
Tori
Susan S.
Lady Brayton
Black Dragon
Julia
Jane
Windy
Kristy
Lisa
Shell
Candace
Wendy
Joyce
Monique
Madelein Bouquet
Ike
Vee Cassidy
Sandy
Little Black Kitten
Fiona