Create your own eerie Halloween lighted decor based off the poem The Raven using tea, stencils, glossy foiled paper and fairy lights!

Do you remember reading The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe back in school? The poem is a classic and darkness of the it lends itself well to Halloween. This framed decor piece is a bit of mixed media and is quite fun to make and has elements of light and shine as wells as an aged look.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Only this and nothing more.”

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DIRECTIONS

To make The Raven lighted Halloween decor, I took the poem, divided it into columns and put it into a font that has a vintage look to it. Then printed it out using my laser printer. I suggest using a heavier weight printer paper, since it will get wet.

Make some tea. No really, make some tea using two tea bags and let that steep for about 10 minutes. Lay some scrap paper or newspaper down to protect your work surface. Grab a tea bag and gently paint the printed poem with the tea bag. Let the poem dry.

Staining the paper with the poem printed with tea to age it.

Repeat this tea bag painting if you’d like more of an aged look. I painted it twice to get the shade that I wanted. Hint: to get the paper to flatten after getting wet, I ran it through a hot laminator (without lamination sheets) to smooth out the wrinkles. Trim the paper to fit the frame.

Grab your tree stencils, black ink pad and a dauber. I used the same Tall Fir Tree, which I have in both 5″ x 11″ and 3″ x 6″. Starting with the larger trees, use the dauber in little circle motions across the stencil to get the image on the paper. Do this lightly, so that you can see the image, but still read the poem behind it. Now, repeat with the smaller trees, so that they appear in front of the larger trees. Use a bit more ink and pressure to make them darker.

Once that is done, use the cutting machine to cut out the raven and the ‘nevermore’ out of the Rinea Ebony Black Glossy Foiled Paper. Be sure to use a mat that is not brand new (so the foiled paper doesn’t stick too much) and the vellum cut setting.

For the ‘nevermore’ I used a font called Blackbeard. I typed the word into the software and then increased the space between the letters. Then I created a box around the word. I used the negative space of the cut letters to create the look. Be sure to keep the little tiny pieces inside of the ‘e’s and ‘o’ to put on to the poem. Tweezers can help here. Use a glue stick to adhere to the poem.

Take the string of lights and keep them wrapped together. Squish it so that it hides behind the raven cut out and tape them down to the bird. Leave the controller so that it hangs out the side, it will peek out behind the frame so that you can turn the lights off and on. Use little pieces of adhesive foam to attach the foiled paper raven to the poem.