Lana Crooks, full-time “plushinator” and proprietor of Crookedart, makes all kinds of wonderful soft-sculpture creatures. Her little plush skulls are becoming a staple of her oeuvre, so she’s looking around for a good name for them.

She’s running a contest over at ToyCyte: Leave a comment suggesting a name for her skull series, and you could win your very own custom skull! The contest runs through Sunday, January 18th at 12 noon PST.

Go over to the ToyCyte link even if you don’t want to enter, just to see some of her other creations. I love her huggable little squid.

(via BoingBoing)

Just in time for after-Christmas shopping, FX Eyes is having a sale!

It’s tricky getting special-effect contact lenses: The cheap ones can be very bad for your eyes, and the expensive ones are, well, expensive. FX Eyes is on the pricey side, but they’re a quality product and are even covered by some insurance plans.

They have a large variety of unusual designs available, and they even offer full-sclera lenses which are harder to find. (Also hard to look at; doesn’t Blackout kind of make you wince a little?) I’m particularly fond of Night Life and Green Dragon.

They also do custom work, so if you’ve always coveted, say, blood-red cat’s eyes, they’ll make them to order in your prescription.

It’d be fun to wear these to work and see how long it took anyone to notice.

Link

The work that MiniMotion does is absolutely mind-blowing. They create intricate miniatures and shadowboxes with unbelievable detail, many of which are animated: There’s a little witch stirring a cauldron, a teeny trapped fairy fluttering inside a bell jar, and an armoire with a magic mirror.

They also have a “how-to” section, explaining how to make your own custom staircases and haunted trees, plus an extensive links page for the miniature enthusiast.

If you’re interested in creating spooky vignettes of your own, this site is a fantastic source of inspiration. (Assuming it doesn’t make you feel really inadequate.) I’m quite impressed with all of the little details, and love the whimsy in so many of the scenes. Do go take a look, if only to drool.

Here’s the perfect item for the young maniacal inventor on your gift list: Alphabet blocks lovingly engraved with a different mad scientific motif. Original pen-and-ink drawings are laser-engraved (natch) onto maple blocks, and they’re just gorgeous. The set of five includes all of the themes that any well-rounded mad scientist should explore:

A – Appendages | B – Bioengineering | C – Caffeine | D – Dirigible | E – Experiment | F – Freeze ray | G – Goggles | H – Henchmen | I – Invention | J – Jargon | K – Potassium | L – Laser | M – Maniacal | N – Nanotechnology | O – Organs | P – Peasants (with Pitchforks) | Q – Quantum physics | R – Robot | S – Self-experimentation | T – Tentacles | U – Underground Lair | V – Virus | W – Wrench | X – X-Ray | Y – You, the Mad Scientist of Tomorrow | Z – Zombies

It’s never too early to teach your children mad science proficiency, and once they’ve grown up and begun an illustrious career reanimating dead tissue and launching laser satellites these blocks would make a lovely desk accessory or source of evidence when the FBI shows up with questions.

Link (via BoingBoing)

(Also check out the “Mr. Bitey” personal organizer on the same site. I want one of these for my desk.)

Okay, it’s December 1, which means it’s officially time to freak out about whatever winter holiday you celebrate. (Unless you’re proactive like me; I’ve been freaking out for weeks now.)

So here’s one less thing to worry about: Non-cutesy greeting cards. Cards such as this Holiday Well Wisher and Very Important Gift are available at Amalthea’s Attic, and they’re just adorable. For, um, very specific values of “adorable.” They’re nicely refined and Gorey-esque, so they should let your personality shine through without upsetting any relative too badly.

I’m rather taken with their Gothic Gift Wrap, too.

You know what we don’t have enough of around here? Jewelry made from animal parts. Fortunately, that’s easily correctible.

Etsy shop Beloved & Co. sells all kinds of interesting vintage accoutrements, including many that involve animal bits. I’m particularly taken with this antique Raven Beak Pendant. This seller also runs the Cabinet of Curiosities blog.

Another Etsy seller, Abysmal, mixes delicate little animal bones with beads and other pretty things to make lovely items like the Cry of the Butterfly choker, shown above. Her items are surprisingly inexpensive, and she donates a portion of the sale to the wild bird center that supplies many of her bones.

For something a little more “in your face” dead animal-wise, Custom Creature Taxidermy offers items like muskrat foot earrings and pendants made of vials containing pickled baby mice.

I’ve also run across several mentions of work by The Squirrel Hole, but there’s currently a “Customer Has Exceeded Bandwidth” notice at the site. Hopefully it’ll be back up soon and we can check out the squirrel bits.

And, of course, there’s always the old standard grouse claw, a popular Victorian accessory. It’s also a traditional Scottish ornament, and can often be found at suppliers of Scottish dance attire.

Jewelry made of bones is an interesting and subtle way to add a bit of spookiness to your everyday garb. (It’s also an excellent icebreaker at parties.) Add a few vertebrae to your life today!

Mental Floss recently posted an article on several “offbeat” dolls, including the Headless Historicals shown here. That reminded me to dig up a couple of other doll-related links that have been mouldering in my Drafts folder.

Marina Bychkova’s The Enchanted Doll features her astonishingly detailed porcelain dolls (borderline NSFW, depending upon your company’s policy regarding ceramic boobies) with astonishing lifelike features. Several of her works involve alternative views of well-known literary characters; her Bride of Frankenstein, for instance, is blonde “to contrast the iconic image of the movie’s version, and also to play on the idea of the body’s low Melanin levels. I imagine that when she was alive she was bright and vibrant with dark eyes and raven hair, but the postmortem trauma to her body and the mechanical process of reanimating her corpse had changed its molecular composition.”

For the serious crafter, there are also Artmaze’s Elfdolls. They’re extraordinarily detailed “blanks” that you can customize to your heart’s content. See this article for a look at some doll-modding possibilities. They ain’t cheap–they start at around $500–but they definitely qualify as artworks instead of toys.

Finally, check out The Dollings, morose little dolls with tragic backstories. And some of them have two heads. How could you not be charmed?

The Anatomical Chart Company, long-time friends of the Halloween crowd due to their bargain pricing on good-looking skeletons,* is having a big clearance sale. They’ve got all kinds of charts, models, reference materials, and bones!

There are a few really good deals to be had, such as Boris the Bat here (marked down from $65 to $26.50). He’d be an interesting accent piece on a bookshelf or coffee table. They’ve also got a bunch of novelties that would make amusing stocking stuffers, like the spine tie and muscle socks. Some of their charts would make interesting pop-art pieces in a kitchen or family room, too. I like the skull one in particular.

I can vouch for their quality and service, so now’s your chance to stock up on some unique decorative items.

*A few years ago they were having trouble with one of their suppliers and ran out of their inexpensive fourth-class skeletons, so they announced that they would briefly sell their first-class skeletons for the cheaper price. I informed Shadow Jack that he had just bought me my anniversary present. (And he nodded absently, which is why I love him.) It arrived, disarticulated in a big shipping box, on the same day that we’d arranged for a guy to run some cable in our basement. After running the line he came back upstairs to find me gleefully attaching the legs to my skeleton. I said, by way of explanation, “It’s my anniversary present.” He, um, didn’t hang around long.

Solid Alliance, a Japanese gadget maker that has a reputation for producing, as Engadget puts it, “zany crap” (they followed up last year’s USB Ghost Detector with a more-featureful Ghost Radar), has recently produced some zany crap that’s pretty appealing.

Their USB flash drive is a custom-sized ring shaped like a big skull. The jaw pops off to reveal a USB plug. It’s got a 2GB capacity and comes in a variety of colors. Yours for $150 from Geek Stuff 4 U.

This is just such a Lucrezia-Borgia-meets-Cyberpunk sort of gadget. I love it.

Link (via BoingBoing)

I just got this in the mail:

Dear Mortals and Immortals,

We are pleased to offer a special once in an eternity deal to all our vampire friends over 21 mortal years of age. The deal is available only at wine.woot.com, and the offer is: 2 bottles of our Chateau du Vampire and 2 bottles of our Dracula Syrah for a limited time offer of $49.99 with an unbelievable shipping price of just $5.00.

The deal expires on Wednesday or until they sell out, so act fast if interested.

If you read this email too late, or just get to it too late, please be reassured that we will be continuing to offer these wines at wickedwinesonline.com site.

Yours faithfully,
Vampire Vineyards

Vampire Wines are in the “meh” category for taste, but they’ve got oodles of style. This price is only slightly cheaper than the regular prices on their site, although shipping is less. If you can’t find the wines locally (most places that sell wine stock it around Halloween), this might be a good deal.