The Day I Met Edgar-Allan POE…

“Fragments of What Remains…”

Mixed media relic-form assemblage created using Printed fragments from “La Chute de la Maison Usher” - Edgar-Allan POE

I didn’t meet Edgar-Allan Poe, not really. But I met him the way artists do—through fragments, through touch, through a sentence that refuses to stay quiet. I was at my table assembling a piece built around “La Chute de la Maison Usher”. His name. His words. His house.I didn’t know, when I began, what the day would hold. The same day…just hours later, my husband’s family farm burned down. (all were safe but the sadness sifted in…)

A house as a living thing…

That morning, as I held Edgar-Allan Poe’s poetic literature (in french) and a translated fragments of his text, I kept returning to that idea: A structure can hold lives. It can remember them. By afternoon, the phone call came. The farm homestead was gone.

The house that had held my husband’s childhood—his parents, brother and sister…the good years and the unbearable ones—became ash in minutes.

Assembling while the ground shifts

I didn’t stop working. That may sound strange, but artists will understand. My hands kept moving because my body needed a way to hold what my mind couldn’t yet name. Elements pierced the surface like anchors. Threads wrapped and tangled. Pressed flowers—already dead, already preserved—were pinned beneath translucent layers. I wasn’t illustrating the fire. I wasn’t recreating the farm.

I was doing what assemblage allows: holding presence after loss.

Coincidence…why POE?

Edgar-Allan Poe wrote “The Fall of the House of Usher” in 1839, long before I was born, long before this farm existed. And yet his understanding feels immediate: That places can collapse not because they are weak, but because they have carried too much. When the house falls in his story, it does not simply crumble. It splits. It sinks. It disappears into itself. There is grief in that—but also release. The same day I was creating with his literary works that spoke to the collapse of a lineage…was the same day our family farm burnt down. I was oddly comforted by Edgar’s poetic understandings…they remain timeless.

A relic, not an illustration

This piece is not an homage. It is not literary fan art. It is a relic-form assemblage—a meeting point between a 19th-century voice and a present-day loss. Between text and touch. Between something that burned and something that remains. I did not plan for this work to carry this meaning. But art rarely asks permission.

What remains…

The farm is gone, but it is not lost. It lives in memory, in story, in the way certain places shape us long after they disappear. And now, unexpectedly, it lives inside a piece built with Poe’s words—quietly, without spectacle. That day, I didn’t meet Edgar-Allan Poe, but I met the truth he wrote about: That houses are more than wood and walls. And when they fall, something in us shifts forever. When the farm burned, what was lost was more than a building. It was a container for multiple lives, contradictions, and generations.

How Mood Blend Studio™ Came to Be…

Mood Blend Studio™ An Artist-Led Digital Design and Finishing Software Tool.

Enter Studio Catalogue

An artist’s journey from layered imagery to a digital software.

For many years, the idea for Mood Blend Studio™ lived quietly in the background of my creative life.

Long before it became a piece of software, it was simply a way of working — an intuitive, layered process I carried with me through my fine art, my photography, and my graphic design practice. I have always been drawn to atmosphere, texture, and emotional quiet. Whether I was working with oil paint, mixed media, or digital imagery, I found myself returning again and again to the same gestures: layering, softening, veiling, revealing.

I wasn’t thinking in terms of tools or systems back then. I was thinking in terms of feeling.

Over time, my studio work began to take on a very specific visual language. My layered florals, subtle landscapes, and moody photographic blends were shaped slowly, through hours of quiet experimentation. I worked intuitively in Adobe Photoshop, stacking textures, adjusting tone, softening edges, and allowing the image to emerge rather than forcing it into a predefined structure.

It was never about effects.
It was always about mood.

From a Private Process to a Public Curiosity…

“Dark Skies & Flora” Solo Exhibition-May 2025

Gallery Vertigo, Vernon BC

In May 2025, I presented my solo exhibition Dark Skies & Flora at Gallery Vertigo in Vernon, British Columbia. The show brought together my oil paintings and my flora-blend photography — two bodies of work that, for me, were always part of the same emotional conversation.

During the exhibition, something unexpected began to happen. People started asking me how the work was created. Not in a casual way — but with genuine curiosity about the process itself. They wanted to know how I layered images, how I built depth, how I created atmosphere digitally in a way that still felt painterly and restrained. Those conversations stayed with me.

For years, I had assumed that my process was too personal, too intuitive, and too slow to ever translate into something shareable. But standing in the gallery, answering those questions again and again, I began to wonder whether there might be a way to offer others a gentler, more accessible path into this kind of creation.

Not a replacement for professional software.
Not a technical training program.
But a quieter alternative — shaped by an artist’s way of working.

An Idea That Had Been Waiting…

In truth, the idea for Mood Blend Studio™ had been forming long before that exhibition.

As a graphic designer and fine artist, I had often imagined what it might feel like to work inside a digital space that behaved more like a studio than a piece of software. A space where you could begin with a photograph and then slowly shape it through tone, texture, and atmosphere — without having to wrestle with layers panels, blend modes, and endless technical decisions.

I wanted something that felt closer to painting.

Something that allowed people to respond to images emotionally rather than procedurally.

After Dark Skies & Flora, I finally listened to that long-held idea.

I took the questions I had been asked in the gallery as a quiet signal to explore whether my process could be translated into a digital environment — one that would allow others to work in the same slow, intuitive way I always had.

Building a Digital Studio…but I don’t code!

Mood Blend Studio™ Desktop Design Application

Over the past year, Mood Blend Studio™ gradually came into being through a deeply iterative, artist-led development process.

Rather than starting with a list of technical features, I began with a feeling:

What would it be like to sit down at a digital table and simply begin?

From there, everything else unfolded.

For the first time in my creative life, I found myself working at the intersection of art and modern coding tools that simply did not exist even a few years ago. These contemporary development environments made it possible to translate my intuitive studio process into a digital space in ways that would once have been unthinkable.

Through a collaborative development process, these tools assisted in shaping my vision — allowing ideas to be tested, refined, and slowly brought into form. I remained deeply involved in every creative and structural decision, guiding how the studio should feel, behave, and unfold for the user.

The software itself was shaped around the same gestures I use in my own work: layering textures, softening edges, shifting tone, introducing painterly overlays, and allowing imagery to emerge slowly through restraint.

I created the artisan overlays, textures, graphic blends and typography from my own fine art and mixed-media work — extending my physical studio practice into the digital space. These elements were never meant to be decorative assets. They were meant to function as quiet collaborators in the creative process.

Mood Blend Studio™ became, quite literally, a digital version of my studio.

From Private Practice to Shared Space.

What continues to move me most about Mood Blend Studio™ is not the software itself — but the possibility it creates for others.

For many years, my layered imagery practice existed only inside my own creative life. It was something I returned to in quiet moments, shaping images as a way of processing emotion, memory, and mood.

Mood Blend Studio™ allows that private practice to become a shared one…co-creation.

It offers others a gentle invitation into a way of working that is:

• intuitive rather than technical

• slow rather than performative

• expressive rather than procedural

• emotional rather than formulaic

It is not a tool for producing content.

It is a studio for shaping feeling.

The Studio Catalogue

Artisan Overlays…my Oil Landscapes Originals.

Mood Blend Studio™ Catalogue Overview of Artisan Overlays, Graphic Blends and Ways to Begin…

Alongside the software, I created a Studio Catalogue — a visual companion that offers a closer look at the artisan overlays, textures, and graphic blends that live inside Mood Blend Studio™.

The catalogue is not meant to function as a product listing. It is an editorial-style artifact — a quiet window into the visual language of the studio and the materials that shape its atmosphere. It reflects the same values that guided the creation of the software itself: restraint, mood, depth, and emotional subtlety.

Sustaining the Studio

Mood Blend Studio™ is offered through personal-use and commercial-use licenses.

This distinction exists for two reasons.

The first is practical. Building and sustaining a living digital studio carries ongoing monthly costs — from hosting and development to maintenance and continued expansion. Attaching a modest price to access helps support the long-term care of the studio and allows it to remain a living, evolving space rather than a static product.

The second is artistic. The artisan overlays, textures, and graphic blends inside Mood Blend Studio™ are created from my own fine art, mixed-media, and photographic work. Licensing these elements for personal or commercial use protects my copyrights while allowing others to co-create with them in an ethical and respectful way.

Rather than selling digital assets outright, Mood Blend Studio™ offers a shared creative environment — one where artists and photographers can shape their own imagery using my visual language as a quiet collaborator.

In this way, the studio becomes both a sustainable practice and a protected one: supporting its continued growth while honoring the authorship and integrity of the work that lives inside it.

Closing

Mood Blend Studio™ is about creating a place where images and designs could be shaped gently. A place where mood could lead and where creation could feel like a quiet conversation rather than a technical task. It began as a private way of working into public invitation. And it continues to unfold — slowly, intuitively, and with care.

Made with Love, DeAnna Josephson Artist

Celebrate the Launch of My New Graphic Design Store for Digital Scrapbook Designers & Creatives:

I began as a mixed-media card maker, happiest when surrounded by torn painted papers, vintage textures, and bits of ephemera…still do in fact! In 2006, digital scrapbooking magazines opened a new world for me. The ability to create layered scrapbook pages on a computer—without running out of paper or glue—felt limitless.

I dove into Adobe Photoshop, Daz3d and motion graphics, spending late nights mastering layers, masks, and blending modes. Before long I was creating my own digital scrapbook graphics, opening an Etsy shop in 2010 and eventually designing in-house for E-Scape and Scrap, a beloved hub for digital scrapbook designers.

From Photoshop to Rebelle: A New Level of Mixed Media

Gilded Botanicals – Handmade Paper collection from The Graphic Design Studio. This set features five artisan-style digital papers adorned with delicate pressed botanical silhouettes in shimmering metallic gold, set against the soft texture of torn-edge handmade paper.

As my digital process continues to evolve, I have been creating extensively in Rebelle by Escape Motions, a natural-media painting app known for lifelike watercolor and oil effects. Rebelle lets me paint digital textures that feel handcrafted, from impasto brushwork to subtle watercolor bleeds. This innovation takes my digital mixed-media graphics far beyond what traditional tools allow.

Launching The Graphic Design Studio

All of that experience now lives in my new online shop, The Graphic Design Studio—a marketplace built for digital scrapbook designers, crafters, and mixed-media artists.
Here you’ll find-Mixed Media meets Shabby Chic!

• High-resolution (300 dpi) graphics in PNG and JPEG formats

• Color-coordinated collections such as vintage florals, textured papers, and impasto backgrounds

• Ready-to-use printable scrapbook papers, overlays, and frames

Most pieces are created from vintage public domain finds and my own items scanned or painted directly in Rebelle, then refined in both Canva and Adobe Photoshop for professional results.

Why Digital Scrapbooking Keeps Growing

Sample: Preserving Memories with a mixed media cluster frame graphic with a young child. (child photo is from canva). Shop the Frame Set in The Graphic Design Studio.

Digital scrapbooking remains one of the most versatile, eco-friendly ways to preserve memories and create art. With instant downloads and transparent PNGs, you can build pages, cards, or wall art without clutter—yet still enjoy the tactile look of real paint and paper.

Whether you design for clients or craft purely for joy, The Graphic Design Studio delivers unique, artist-made resource assets that blend traditional artistry with cutting-edge digital tools.

From Surgery to Studio…

As I lie here in bed, three weeks into recovering from a major surgery, I find myself reflecting on the whirlwind that was May 2025—a month of profound contrast, both joyful and life-altering.

May 2025 brought dreams to life. I had my first solo exhibition at Gallery Vertigo and had the incredible opportunity to perform alongside my dear friend, Rose Kirchner, who is an accomplished singer-songwriter. These were not just career milestones, but personal victories that took years of persistence, heartache, and growth to achieve. I stood at the summit of a mountain I had been climbing for so long, and it felt incredible to celebrate those moments with my family, coworkers, and the community that has supported me.

Yet, even as I stood in the light of accomplishment, I knew a shadow was approaching. At the end of the month, I underwent a major surgery I had long feared. The physical recovery remains slow with complications—my body aches, my energy is low—but my spirit remains vividly awake. My mind continues to dream, to imagine, to plan.

This period of stillness has also become a time of visioning. As I rest, I feel a pull toward something new: the transformation of my home studio into a welcoming gallery and creative space this fall. It’s something I’ve quietly prepared for, even as my studio was in disarray. Before the surgery, I managed to clear out a small corner—just enough to plant the seed of what’s next.

My home Studio & Gallery open to the public starting September 2025. Includes sessions, paintings and mixed media hand-dyed art kits and much more!

My goal now is to work more from home—closer to my husband and three children, rooted in the rhythm of our life together. I recently lost one of my two positions with School District 22, and with that loss comes a wave of financial uncertainty. I won’t pretend I’m not scared. I am. But I’m also determined.

So here I am—healing, dreaming, and holding onto hope. I envision a future where I can share my art through intimate home studio sessions, nature-inspired mixed media workshops and online tutorials. Maybe this is how I begin to bridge the gap between fear and faith, between loss and new growth.

This is the beginning of a new chapter. Thank you for being here with me.

— DeAnna

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