The Misty World of Arial Hollyberry

For those who know me, it doesn’t come as a surprise to to see witches of all shapes and sizes showing up all over my home in October. Let me say this…I Love Halloween!  It is also known as All Hallows Eve, Samhain, Spirit Night, and Hallow E’en, just to name a few. It doesn’t matter what you call it, I still love it, all of it, the customs and traditions, the history, the funky facts, the art. I love it so much that I was married on Samhain.

Now that it is October, I find myself looking for all sorts of Halloween information and I found an excellent site just this morning, it is The Halloween News Network. Much  to my delight, It has links to everything. Of course there are my wonderful artist friends,  Carolee Clark is right there at the top of my favorites. Her paintings are to die (no pun intended!) for. Carolee and other artists attend an event called Ghoultide Gathering, where you can find the most fiendishly clever artwork, all original I might add. Stephanie Rawson, an artist and one of the organizers said the event is billed as the Halloween Artist Spectacular. If you are on Face Book add Carolee as a friend. Pictured is one of Carolee’s creations (I love this box!)

Arial has told me that the faerie realm isn’t without their own version of witches. The difference being that the faerie witches don’t need brooms to fly!

There is one more site that I would love you all to visit, it is “The Fantastical World of Holidays” . I think you will agree that it is a treasure trove of art.

All this month I will be bringing other goodies to you, but right now here are a few rhymes from early nineteenth century Halloween postcards (a special thanks to Silver Ravenwolf for including them in her book, “Halloween”).

~~***~~

Come with me

All Hallow’s night

We’ll frighten everyone in sight

Such pranks, for once

are justified

And fun and frolic amplified

~~***~~

On Hallowe’en the thing

you must do

Is pretend that nothing

can frighten you

An’ if somethin’ scares you

and you must run

Jus’ let on like

it’s Hallowe’en fun.

I guess it’s a good thing that I didn’t get all the Halloween decorations put away because Odette found a large pumpkin to use as a temporary home. “Sprinkle a few mushrooms here an there an twill be a dandy home, nice an cozy!” I had my doubts. It looked a little cramped to me, so I went in search of a couple of the larger pumpkins that I had put out in the garage on a shelf last October.

I cut  holes in the sides of the pumpkins and grabbed my handy dandy duct tape (I always say that with duct tape and WD 40 you can fix anything). When I had all the pumpkins taped together I presented them to Warren and Odette. “Now you have a gnome mansion!” Just because they were only going to be inside until the weather got warmer didn’t mean that they had to be cramped.

Ferne had been busy pulling the Spanish moss out of my house plants to use as roofing and proceeded to spread it all over the top of the pumpkins. She turned to Odette for inspection. “Aye lass, you be doin’ a grand job of it.” Inspired by the praise, Ferne redoubled her efforts, and when she thought that the moss was perfect, she waived her wand and let a light coat of golden glitter filter down over the entire thing.

Odette had been busy carving the “eyes” into windows and was putting the finishing touch on the green curtains she had hung up. The “mouth” of one pumpkin became the front door. Warren had been inspecting the seams and when he came around to the front, he reached into a small pouch that hung at his waist. With a grand gesture he flung a handful of glitter at the abode. The sparkling mist hung in the air for only a moment then settled around the windows, producing a glowing rendition of window shutters.

I would never have thought that pumpkins could be made to look anything like a house, but here it was, complete with green curtains at the windows and shiny shutters on the outside. We all stood back and beamed at our handiwork, (well some of us hung in mid air). “Papa, it would be lookin’ like grand auntie two toes old gourd back home!”

Looking around, I tried to picture where we were going to put the new home so that the dogs wouldn’t get at it. I noticed blasts of green light shooting out from around the cabinet doors beneath the kitchen sink. Hurrying over, I opened the doors just in time to see Pip swing her wand at a can of cleanser…no! not my cleanser!

© Tami Ruesch, The Misty World of Arial Hollyberry, 2009.