Over at the Seeing Things blog, M.J. shares a simply lovely idea for spreading a little Halloween love.

Every year, a few nights before Halloween, my husband and I hop in the car and drive around the city looking for the best yard haunt we can find. When we finally spot the most horrifying, spine tingling, hair raising yard haunt that meets our pretty stiff criteria we stealthy approach the front door, in full costume, ring the bell and present the creator/owner of the yard haunt with a special little sumthin, sumthin for bringing delight to our Halloween. We have met the best people doing this, made some terrific friends and snagged some awesome haunt ideas!

She’s got instructions for creating a spooky-looking box full of creepy, edible treats: Icing roses, “coffin nails,” four kinds of “graveyard dirt” labeled with their cemeteries of origin, and much else. The execution is really clever; the coffin nails, for instance, are made of Pocky, cut in half and sharpened with a (clean) pencil sharpener. (I also love the idea of specialty cemetery dirt.) The post includes a detailed supplies list and downloadable labels to print.

I just adore this idea. Not only is it a great excuse to spend an evening driving around and admiring decorations, it allows you to reward people who have made a special effort to be spooky. As a bonus, you get the chance to meet like-minded people and perhaps even make new friends.

If an elaborately decorated box is a bit beyond your ambition (or if you think you might like to reward multiple houses), there are plenty of simpler alternatives. I’m a big fan of (clean) paint cans as a packaging option: They’re available very inexpensively at hardware stores and some craft supply stores (I’ve also seen clear plastic ones at craft stores), have a nice tight-fitting lid, and are easy to label and/or decorate.* You might also choose large Chinese takeout-style containers (also available at craft stores, often in the bridal section), cardboard craft boxes, or bundles tied up in Halloween-themed bandanas. Fill with a selection of candy and some cheap novelty Halloween items from a dollar store or a site such as Oriental Trading.

Then take to the streets and reward fellow spooksters. You’ll have fun, and they’ll appreciate their efforts being noticed.

*Paint cans are also a great choice if you want to “Boo” your neighborhood. If you aren’t familiar with that tradition, the nutshell version: Make up one or two baskets of Halloween goodies and leave them anonymously on neighbors’ doorsteps along with instructions to “boo it forward” by doing the same thing with other neighbors. Include a sign for them to hang in their front window so they don’t get re-booed by somebody else. There are sample signs and poems here.

I suppose that Doctor Who is technically more geek than goth, but the show did give us Weeping Angels and The Silence and also he met Satan one time so it’s gothy enough if you squint a little. Shadaughter happens to be a huge fan, so when I saw Darling Army’s splendid gender-bent 10th Doctor costume I wondered how difficult it would be to DIY something reasonably similar. A few weeks later my local fabric store had a sale on suiting fabric,* so I decided to take a crack at it. If you’d like to try your own version, here are my build notes.

The DA version has a wrap front that is meant to mimic a suit jacket’s lapels. I was concerned that might gap and look sloppy, so I instead opted for a smooth front with a bit of a plunging neckline. The pattern I used was Simplicity 4015, with a couple of changes:

• I lengthened the skirt by 3″ so I’d have more to work with if Shadaughter opted for a really poofy petticoat.
• Part of the instructions tell you to sew the lining to the bodice except at the back and bottom, then baste those raw edges together. Later, you sew the skirt and zipper over this basting, leaving you with all kinds of unfinished seams inside. Oh Simplicity, why you so crazy? Instead I sewed the skirt and zipper to just the bodice, then turned the lining edges to the inside along the seam lines and sewed it in place over the big ugly skirt seam and zipper. Presto! Finished seams! (I also flat-felled the seams in the skirt because unfinished edges make me stabby.)
• I used the belt pattern as a general guideline but cut two pieces instead of one, adding 9″ to each. I sewed these two pieces together at one end, folded that in half, sewed around the long edge (leaving a little gap for turning), then turned it right-side-out and sewed the gap closed (if this doesn’t make any sense, see the illustration below). This left me with a long, wrap-around belt with curved ends, which I stitched to the waist in front.

  

For a final Easter-egg detail, I hand-embroidered “Bad Wolf” in rough letters on the back of the skirt near the bottom.

The petticoat (not shown here) was Simplicity 3847. Since Shadaughter wanted only a little bit of poofiness, I used a softer tulle instead of the netting called for in the instructions. For Extreme Poof, use stiffer netting and/or add more layers.

The trenchcoat was a fairly plain women’s winter coat, Burda 7855; the only changes I made were to shorten it so it matched the dress and to not put in pockets; I just sewed the flaps in place to give the illusion that they’re there. This was ostensibly to make the line of the coat a little smoother but actually because I fricking hate putting in welted pockets. The fabric is a more trenchcoat-like heavy cotton rather than wool; I’m mildly annoyed that the color is a bit too light–the one in the show is more of a tobacco–but I didn’t realize my error until I was halfway through making it and I was insufficiently annoyed to start over. It is, incidentally, lined in the appropriate TARDIS blue.

The shirt was Simplicity 2741; I could have used a purchased shirt but I am somewhat demented where hand-making costumes is concerned. (Also, making it myself let me choose a soft, feminine fabric and pretty floral buttons which I couldn’t get a good photo of; sorry.)

The necktie is a vintage tie, courtesy of my vintage husband. If you want an “authentic” pattern, blogger Steve Ricks has you covered.

Although there are a lot of individual pieces, none of them were particularly difficult; the only bit that was even slightly fiddly was the collar on the coat, and even that was straightforward once I realized what they were getting at. The cost wasn’t rock-bottom because there was a lot of fabric involved, but the total was probably around $65 (plus a lot of my time). This amount could be reduced quite a bit by making only the pinafore and getting everything else from a thrift store (you might have to shorten and re-hem the coat, but that’s easy).

Overall, this was a fun project and I’m reasonably pleased with the results. There’s still plenty of time before Halloween to make one of your very own!

*Fun fact: The Doctor’s suit is blue if the episode takes place in the future and brown if it’s in the past. This also holds true for the 11th Doctor: His bow tie is red if they’ve gone forward in time and blue if they’ve gone back. The more you know!

By day, Chris-Rachael Oseland writes for the Austin post. By night, she “descends into her lair at the base of an extinct volcano, dons her apron and monocle, and subjects her minions to countless culinary experiments.”

The results of her postmeridian perambulations are showcased at Kitchen Overlord, where she’ll show you how to make anatomically-accurate heart pull-apart bread, facehugger eggs, and Charles Dickens’ favorite Christmas punch.

The site’s emphasis leans slightly more toward “geek” than “goth,” but there’s plenty of overlap. Indiana Jones-inspired monkey brains would certainly be right at home on a Halloween table, and roasted tribbles could easily be passed off as roasted tarantulas.

She’s also written several books on geeky food and drink, including a True Blood drinking guide, a a Doctor Who-inspired cookbook, and a book of steampunk cocktails.

New Mexico company Great Face and Body peddles Bathing Bad, bath salts tinted to resemble the crystal meth in the cable series Breaking Bad (as ShortList Magazine put it, “Just Add Walter”).

It’s a cute idea, but an 8-oz bag goes for 16 bucks, which is a fairly ridiculous markup (in their defense, the label states that part of the proceeds go to charity). Bath salts are absurdly cheap easy to make at home.

Ingredients

1 C Epsom salts
1 C sea salt or kosher salt
1/2 C rock salt
1/2 C Borax (optional)
1/4 tsp glycerine (optional)
Essential oil of your choice (see note below)
Blue food coloring

Instructions

Mix the dry ingredients together. Add the glycerine, a few drops of essential oil, and a few drops of food coloring. Stir or place in a container with a tight-fitting lid and shake until thoroughly blended (if you’re making a large batch, you can mix with a heavy-duty mixer too; a hand mixer isn’t powerful enough). Continue adding essential oil and food coloring a few drops at a time until you’re satisfied with the color and scent.

Package in a ziploc bag. If giving as a gift, attach a label with instructions to add about 1/2 C to a bath; if desired, use the graphics program of your choice to add additional images and text to the label. You can print out the labels on precut stickers to make it easy to prepare several bags at a time.

A note on essential oils: Not all essential oils are suitable for use in this project, since some can irritate skin. Also be sure to take allergies into account if giving the salts as a gift.

Try different combinations of these:

• Refreshing – Sandalwood, cedarwood, lavender, vetiver, or jasmine
• Romantic – Rose, geranium, jasmine, ylang-ylang, or clary sage
• Invigorating – Cypress, fir, juniper, lemon, nutmeg, orange, grapefruit, spearmint, or peppermint
• Relaxing – Chamomile, geranium, lavender, jasmine, or sandalwood

(via Blame It On the Voices)

A while back I stumbled upon this link, which details ten unusual eBay purchases. One of the items was what purported to be an 18th-century Vampire Killing Kit. It was more likely a Blomberg Kit (which have a murky and tangled past of their own), but I quite liked the idea of such a project so I decided to take a crack at making one myself. I gave this one to my Secret Pumpkin this year, but my notes are below if you’d like to make one of your own.

Although this project is somewhat on the involved side, no single piece is particularly difficult; there are just a lot of pieces and it takes a while to put everything together. However, I think the results are worth the effort. You can create a stripped-down version to carry around as a prop when you go clubbing, or display a full kit on a bookcase as an decorative object. Plus you can also use it to kill vampires, should you encounter any.

First I had to decide what items to include. A quick canvass of the Internet turned up a surprising number of sites devoted to “vintage” kits; I chose interesting equipment from a variety of sources, and came up with the following list: Read the rest of this entry »

Ingredients
For marinade
1 C apple cider vinegar
1 C red wine
1/2 C fresh lemon juice
1/2 C finely chopped celery
4 scallions, halved lengthwise
4 garlic cloves, crushed
3 dashes of Tabasco
3 bay leaves
2 sprigs fresh rosemary
1 sprig Italian parsley
1 sprig fresh thyme
1 Tbsp kosher salt
3/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1/4 tsp whole juniper berries

1 3-lb rabbit, cut into 8 pieces

For frying
2 Tbsp vegetable oil
2 Tbsp unsalted butter
All-purpose flour

Instructions
Bring marinade ingredients to a boil in a nonreactive saucepan; turn off heat and let cool. Place rabbit pieces in a glass baking dish or ziploc bag; pour marinade over. Cover and chill for 48 hours.

Remove rabbit from marinade and pat dry. Strain marinade through a sieve and set aside; discard solids in sieve.

Heat oil and butter in a large heavy pot. Dredge rabbit in flour, shaking off excess. Fry rabbit, turning once, until golden brown, about 4 minutes per side; work in batches if necessary. Transfer rabbit to a plate and discard drippings from pot (leave the crunchy brown bits). Pour reserved marinade into pot and bring to a simmer. Add rabbit pieces, cover, and simmer gently until rabbit is tender, 1 1/2–2 hours. Serve with boiled potatoes or noodles.

(Adapted from Bon Appetit)

BoingBoing recently pointed to the German company URB, who specialize in tights and socks that appear to be melting.

It’s a neat idea, but the prices are pretty cringe-inducing: $55USD, plus shipping. For that price you could buy a whole lot of liquid latex and roll your own.

Liquid latex is available at a lot of party stores around Halloween–it can be used for special-effects makeup like wrinkly skin–and can also be found in a wide range of colors online: LiquidLatex and Liquid-Latex are two sources, but there are plenty of others. The online sites also have guides for using the material, so you can refer to them for the best way to apply the latex to clothing.

You can wear the socks/tights and have someone else make the latex drips, but a more convenient way is to stretch them over a piece of PVC pipe (or, in a real pinch, a can of tomatoes) that is the same circumference as whatever part of your leg you want the drips on (thighs/calves/ankles). Brush on a thick layer at the top, then allow extra latex to drip down as far as you want. Set aside to dry, then carefully peel off of the PVC. Distress further with holes and runners as desired.

Easy! Much cheaper than buying them premade, and if you somehow manage to ruin them it’s easy to make more.

Etsy store iamhome sells handmade skulls covered with chalkboard paint so you can write notes to yourself on somebody’s noggin. In addition to modern human skulls, they also have Ardipithecus, Australopithecus, and Homo erectus models.

Their skulls are all handmade, which means no obvious seams and a nice smooth exterior for writing. The price really isn’t bad; a DIY version might be a little cheaper but not immensely: A fourth-quality skull from Skeleton Store is $18 and the paint would run around $10, plus you might need primer which is another $8. If you were making a bunch as gifts the DIY route might be a better deal, but as a one-off buying a ready-made one sounds a whole lot easier.

But! The chalkboard paint can be used to make a lot of other interesting objects write-on-able (that probably isn’t a word but it totally should be). For instance:

Wine Glasses
Platters
Picture Frames
Mirrors
Cocktail Rings (bottom photo)
Wine Bottles
Pumpkins

…plus anything else you’d like to give a creative makeover. Many of these, presented along with a box of colored chalk, would make a unique and inexpensive hostess gift as well.

Update: The fabulous Cookie pointed me to these instructions for making your own chalkboard paint, so the sky’s the limit in terms of available colors. Thanks, Cookie!

I recently stumbled across a photo of what appeared to be antique-looking brooches featuring gothic quotations, but eventually tracked them down to an Etsy shop and found that what was actually being sold were digital collage sheets and the photo was just a suggested use for them.

Fortunately, such brooches–and other jewelry–would be ridiculously simple to DIY. All you need are brooch findings (also called brooch bases and brooch blanks and if you search for “brooch” long enough it stops looking like a word any more), some kind of image-manipulation software, and a color printer.

The bases are easy enough to locate; they can be found in the jewelry-making section of most craft stores, or online: Places like Fire Mountain Gems have pin backs and pendants and even button covers if you want to use short quotes and write teeny. These photo brooches are nice, and you can also finds loads of different styles on Etsy, like this one.

Next, use Photoshop or a similar program to create an image with an appropriate quotations. You can use special-effect brushes to create interesting filigree backgrounds, or draw freehand (you can also do this sans computer if you want to be all low-tech about it). I did a sample up above, using part of a poem by Pablo Neruda. Other ideas might be:

Listen to them — children of the night. What music they make.
— Bram Stoker, Dracula

Now it is the time of night
That the graves, all gaping wide,
Every one lets forth his sprite
In the churchway paths to glide
— Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Sometimes human places create inhuman monsters.
— Stephen King, The Shining

Make sure the image will fit your jewelry finding, print it out, and cut it to shape. Glue in place, and if you aren’t using a finding with a cover, give it a couple of coats of a clear sealer like Mod Podge to protect it.

Easy! Cheap! A fun gift idea, and also a good project to do with kids. A bunch of these with different quotations would look good arranged on a purse or jacket.

Oh sure, the instructions say that this is an octopus, but I think we all know it’s really Cthulhu.

Instructables user donedirtcheap posted a great tutorial for making a pizza-dough tentacled horror, complete with pepperoni suckers.

The instructions include a recipe for dough, but obviously you can use your own favorite recipe; I also like this one and this one from Smitten Kitchen (see also that site’s tips for painless pizza making, including the fact that if you really don’t feel like making your own, you can buy premade dough from your local pizza parlor). I also like the same site’s fresh tomato sauce and naked tomato sauce recipes.

The instructions suggest treating the tentacles like breadsticks, with the pepperoni stuck on with an egg wash; you could also stuff the tentacles with cheese (string cheese works great for this application) or give them a good brushing with garlic-infused olive oil instead of egg. You could also use olive slices instead of pepperoni for vegetarian tentacles.

Incidentally, the instructions don’t mention what kind of cheese to use, suggesting only “wonderful cheese.” Mozzarella is the standard melting cheese, and a bit of Parmesan adds depth. Slashfood has suggestions for selecting cheese for pizza.

You could also use the same Cthulhoid idea for a dessert pizza, either sprinkled with cinnamon sugar or baked plain and then decorated with fruit: Blend 8 oz. cream cheese, 1/2 C sugar, and 2 tsp vanilla extract until smooth. When the dough is cool, spread the cream cheese mixture on top. Decorate with sliced fruit of your choice; bananas or kiwis would make pretty good tentacles.

This would be a great addition to a party buffet table, or just a fun thing to serve to friends at a Lovecraft movie night.

(via Blurgh!)