Soft-sculpture artist Sara Lanzillotta makes one-of-a-kind stuffed oddities and fabric freaks, including faeries captured in bell jars, circus freaks, and a rather astonishing variety of siamese twins. I love her goth mermaids and little floppity dolls, too.

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Santiago Chopper offers this spooky motorcycle helmet for those who think full-face helmets are for sissies. It’d be a neat, if somewhat pricey, bike helmet too.

Link (via BoingBoing)

A bit too late for Christmas, but if you’re looking for some unusual board games to play at an upcoming gathering, Wired has a pretty neat list.

Fiji
Rio Grande Games, two to five players, ages 10 and up, $30

Buy it for: The mastermind

You play: A souvenir hunter with little respect for the dead

The object: Amass a large, unsettling collection of shrunken heads.

I’m really quite taken with a couple of these, particularly Ra and Battlelore. Although the latter may be just because I like the image of ostrich-riding goblins.

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Threadbanger has a great post about stepping back in time with creepy, vintage Christmas gifts.

Want to have an unconventional…whatever holiday you celebrate this season? I’ll help you and so will Etsy.com. Ok, let’s say The Decemberists are your favorite band and you can’t wait for Sweeney Todd to be in Theaters. Then you’ll need to have a Christmas of Curiosities! Forget getting ipod’s or Guitar Hero 3 or any technological gadget and think more 1800’s. Break out your suspendered trousers, bowler hats, petticoats, and Edwardian high collared black lace blouses because you’re getting antiquated.

I’m a sucker for “curiosities” of the type mentioned here any time of the year.

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I once had a friend send me a Harry & David gift basket, with the note that she had narrowly been talked out of sending (and here I’m quoting directly from the ad copy) “Ten Plagues of Egypt Chocolate Gift Basket! Yes, you too can down chocolate locusts, caramel boils, and dead cattle in this cheery collection.” I could most definitely be friends with whomever came up with the idea of a Ten Plagues chocolate collection.

Ditto for whomever produced this cute set of wine markers. Because nothing says “Party!” like a big suppurating boil.

There’s one for each of the Plagues. The set uses pretty commonly-available charms, so if you’re feeling crafty you could put together some of your very own.

Link (via Awesome)

Artist Margaux Lange makes jewelry and accessories out of Barbie body parts. The result is both intriguing and creepy as hell.

I enjoy the funny juxtaposition of wearing the body, on the body. Barbie has become the accessory instead of being accessorized. I take pleasure in the contrast and contradiction of something mass-produced being transformed and revealed as a unique, handmade, wearable piece of art.

I like the daintiness of many of her pieces; you wouldn’t necessarily notice immediately that the jewelry contains little dismembered body parts, thus enhancing the Zoiks Factor when you looked closer.

Here’s her Website and her Etsy shop.

(via Awesome)

Here’s another neat commercial product that could easily be stolen adapted for the home game. These ties are freehand machine embroidery, and I like the loose, casual look of the finished skulls.

There are all kinds of embroidery patterns and clip art that are there for the googling, or if you’re artsy you could draw a design yourself. Be sure to keep the lines relatively simple, since you’re going to have to follow them with a sewing machine.

If you’re sufficiently comfortable with your sewing skills to attempt a freehand design, get a blank silk necktie or scarf (psst: Shadow Manor sells these) and either draw the lines lightly on the tie using tailor’s chalk or transfer the pattern to tracing paper and pin the paper securely on top of the tie. Then, moving slowly, follow the lines with your sewing machine.

If you’re no good with a machine, hand-stitch the pattern using a contrasting color of thread; the stitches won’t be quite as tight, so you’ll need a contrasting color for the design to stand out. Either way, you’ll have a unique and fashionable accessory.

If you’re looking for some atmospheric music to play by candlelight, here are a couple of artists you might check out.

Nox Arcana’s albums include titles such as “Darklore Manor,” “Carnival of Lost Souls,” and “Blood of Angels.” Their latest, “Shadow of the Raven,” is a Poe-inspired album:

Delve into the haunted realms of Edgar Allan Poe, as Nox Arcana enriches the classic tales of the literary master of the macabre with a lush musical tapestry of Victorian elegance and Gothic nightmares. This dark soundscape of ghostly melodies, mournful dirges, eerie sound effects and ominous orchestrations is accompanied by Joseph Vargo’s lavish artwork depicting Poe’s classic horror tales, and even offers fans a hidden “gold bug” riddle.

(Joseph Vargo also did the artwork for The Gothic Tarot, which is very pretty.)

Midnight Syndicate advertises themselves with the slogan, “Gothic Nightmare Soundtracks,” but I think that sells them rather short. (Their bio mentions their quest to create “soundtracks for the imagination,” which is closer to the mark.) They’re a favorite with haunters trying to enliven–or, um, endeaden, I guess–their attractions, but I like them as background music. The all-instrumental albums are meant to tell a story, so (for example) their “Gates of Delirium” album begins with “Arrival,” moves through tracks such as “Cage of Solitude” and “Non Compos Mentis,” and winds up with “Ebony Shroud” and “Sleep Tight.” Lovely!

If you like Dead Can Dance, you ought to like these two. Check ’em out!

These insanely-detailed sewer rat slippers are just the thing to slip your feet into on cold winter mornings. If they didn’t appear to be a Japanese-only product, I would own a pair of these faster than you could sing the theme song to Ben.

Click the thumbnail for larger; I can’t believe how lifelike and cuddly they look. (I suppose they could just be artfully Photoshopped real rats; anybody read Japanese?)

Link (via BoingBoing)

This sterling silver shrunken head necklace by Tobias Wistisen features long silver hair and a creepily stiched-shut mouth. There’s also a multiple-head version, for those who like their shrunken-head jewelry to be a little more overt, along with matching earrings and brooches.

(Beware: The site is all Evil Flash, so you can’t link directly to anything. Flash. Boo.)

Link (via Phantasmaphile)