The Macabre Magpie

05/30/2026

How did you spend your Friday night?

Silently fuming over “passive income” slop shops and digital mockup land?

Same, lmao 🥲🪦

05/30/2026

Why am I still dealing with and defending these comments? Lmao

🥲🪦

But yeah anywhooo, everything I share here is real.

Our real strange storybook home.

My real strange storybook art.

Thank you for being here. 🖤🎨

05/29/2026

I’ll be honest about something that really bothers me.

A huge percentage of woven blankets, rugs, and even art prints, decor…anything you can think of really…are digital mockups.

Not real photos.

Not real textiles.

Not real life.

An illusion.

They’re digital overlays placed onto blank products designed to look perfect.

And yes, this morbid corvid has a massive problem with that.

Because it creates expectations that the real, physical piece can never match.

It creates a polished illusion that doesn’t exist outside of a screen.

And it hurts artists like myself who choose reality over perfection.

What you see here is real.

Real textiles.

Real texture.

Real lighting.

Sometimes wrinkled.

Sometimes lived-in.

Always honest.

You might spot a heating pad cord. 😅

A little dust.

Paint on the ceiling.

Hair from our furrmiliars. 🐾

A corner that isn’t Pinterest-perfect.

Good!

Because that’s life.

And after spending far too many years destroying myself in pursuit of perfection, I have absolutely no interest in pretending anymore.

Creating art for textiles is a perpetual learning process.

Push clarity too far and you lose the textile.

It becomes harsh.

Noisy.

Artificial.

(Ask me how I know. 🪦🥲)

So how can you tell when you’re looking at a mockup?

Start paying attention to patterns.

You’ll begin to notice:

✨ the same desert backdrop
✨ the same perfectly lit outdoor scene
✨ the same sterile beige room
✨ the same fu***ng pair of white tennis shoes lmao

Everything looks too perfect.

Perfect drape.

Perfect lighting.

Perfect shadows.

The colors are often hyper-saturated.

The detail looks unnaturally crisp.

And here’s the biggest giveaway:

No visible weave.

Real woven textiles have texture.

They soften detail.

They break up color.

If it looks crystal clear, perfectly smooth, hyper-sharp, and impossibly saturated…

there’s a good chance you’re not looking at a real photo.

Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

Thank you for supporting artists like this morbid corvid who choose real over polished perfection. 🖤

What you see here is the actual piece.

Not a simulation of it.

05/29/2026

🐺🍎

I’ve spent the last year hyper-focusing on my special interest… building this collection of strange storybook worlds, and seeing them begin to exist as textiles still feels a little surreal.

A few people have asked, so I wanted to mention:

✨ Installments are absolutely welcome. Always. 🫶🏻
✨ Preorders for Red Riding Hood Wolf close next week.
✨ These are made to order, and each order helps me bring the next Underfoot Folk Tale to life. 🎨

I know a large statement textile isn’t exactly an impulse purchase. Trust me, lmao. I live in a house full of them. 😅

Happy to answer questions, share closeups, talk sizes, or help figure out what would work best for your space.

Available as both a rug and woven throw.

Link in comments. 🖤

And for anyone curious how a piece like this lives in a home, I included a photo of the existing version in our Hansel & Gretel kitchen. This design will soon be retired and replaced by the newer Underfoot Folk Tale version. 🖤🎨

05/28/2026

Shining the spotlight on my whimsical Grackle Fool fellow (as he will appear in my WIP tarot deck). A charming and whimsical AF fellow indeed. 🖤🐦‍⬛🍄

Grackles are my honestly my favorite birds next to corvids, of course with their lil piercing yellow velociraptor eyes.

But he’s ready to delve
🎵 into the unknowwwwwwn 🎵

05/28/2026

My husband talking about our canine sentinel, Howard last night.

"Aww he's in his bed."

Me: "no, he's literally resting on my feet." Lmao

My easy to scare husband: "Welp... I just saw a shadow demon. I'm now going to cover my feet so it doesn't drag me to hell."

Lmaoo 😭😂

05/28/2026

What our hellscape late stage capitalistic society wants me to be vs me as I actually am lmaooo 😭 🪦

Still relentlessly holding onto my UBI fantasy land tbh. 😭

05/27/2026

My Death card Underfoot Folk Tale is still looking for a new home! 💀✂️

Factory fresh One for Sorrow Underfoot Folk Tale aka the Death card from my WIP tarot deck!

The rug features my original dark folklore artwork — inspired by mythology (The Fates), Slavic folk art, nursery rhymes, grief, transformation, and tenderness even through inevitable endings.

This is a brand new sealed 5x7 ft Underfoot Folk Tale statement rug straight from production while I continue slowly fulfilling rug orders from my little storybook goblin nest.

Styled photos shown from my personal sample rug so you can see how it looks in an actual cozy eclectic witchy home.

The rug you will receive is still in original packaging!

Payment: $325.00
Venmo or Square preferred. Cash accepted for local NE Ohio pickup/door drop off within reason. 🫶🏻

Installments are also available. 🫶🏻

Ready to ship immediately and shipping is free from my nest to yours!

Please shoot me a message or comment if interested. Happy to share more pictures / videos of my sample. 🙂

05/27/2026

Please bump if you love this newer more immersive format. 🖤🤍

I’m super excited because I’ve been developing a new more immersive format for my textiles lately that are designed to reflect how the cards themselves will eventually appear in my WIP tarot deck. And Red Riding Hood Wolf is officially the first to receive the full Underfoot Folk Tale treatment. 🐺🍎✨

The checkered star border has become one of my favorite recurring motifs throughout this collection, inspired both by the patterning of magpie plumage (magpie being the Slavic translation of my maiden name 🐦‍⬛🇸🇰) and my lifelong love of storybook whimsy, folk art, and slightly eerie fairytale aesthetics. 🖤

So with that said…

Underfoot Folk Tale rug + woven throw preorders for Red Riding Hood Wolf are now officially open! 🖤

This piece underwent multiple revisions and I absolutely love where it ultimately landed.

(Also yes, this wolf is absolutely my brave little preorder guinea pig. 😅)

🐺🍎

05/27/2026

Well…since the magpie is out of the proverbial bag. 😅

Still kind of surreal to type this honestly, but this summer a limited collection of The Macabre Magpie prints and textiles will officially be heading to Salem, Massachusetts! 😭🖤

The Salem Plant Witch recently received my very first magpie guillotine folk art rug (aka Justice from my WIP tarot deck) and shared these photos of it in their absolutely dreamy witchy space, and I genuinely could not imagine a more perfect home for it. 💖💀

I’m so excited (and honestly honored) to be working with a shop whose aesthetic and spirit feel so deeply aligned with my own work. 🖤

More updates soon, but for now I’m just feeling incredibly grateful that my strange little folklore-filled creations are finding homes with kindred spirits and as if I didn’t already have an excuse to visit Salem. ✨ I definitely do now. 😭

I got my new rug from The Macabre Magpie. I loved their work so much, that by early summer I’m going to be carrying a limited collection of their prints and textiles at the shop. 😍