The cute, I am dying of it.

Kirsten of Quernus Crafts is an artist who specializes in polymer clay sculptures of small animals. To say that she is prolific is something of an understatement; the Flickr stream displaying her work runs to 150 pages. To say that she is talented is also something of an understatement; her creations include bookish dragons, rodentine grim reapers, and Snape, Dumbledore, and Harry Potter if they were mice. (Other mousy notables are Angus Young, Freddy Mercury, and Ozzy Osbourne.) She also has Viking snails because why not.

She sells pre-made “miniature masterpieces for your mantelpiece” on the site and also does commissions (although a note on that page says that she isn’t accepting new ones right now): Her “Quernus Your Pet” service will render your pet in miniature, and she also does custom wedding cake toppers; a few of those latter provide interesting glimpses into the minds of her customers, since some of her requested couples include a mole and a marmoset, a penguin and a tortoise, and–my favorite–“a girly mole and an army boy T-Rex”.

Her gallery is a lot of fun to browse, and is an excellent source of inspiration if you like to work with polymer clay. If she begins accepting commissions again soon, her prices are quite reasonable and it looks like she’d be a great resource for a one-of-a-kind cake topper or other memento.

(via Geek Crafts)

Cartoonist and sculptor Dyland Edwards draws and sculpts little feeping creatures as part of an ongoing effort to increase the number of monsters in people’s homes and offices. That strikes me as an extremely worthwhile goal.

The name particularly amuses me: A perennial problem for software developers is feature creep, the tendency for a program to pick up additional (and unnecessary) bells and whistles that were never in the original requirements document. This is often referred to as “creeping featurism,” and since programmers tend to be a silly lot, it’s often deliberately spoonerized to “feeping creaturism.”*

Edwards has made the creatures that feep a reality, and they look exactly like I’d expect something that scuttles around in the depths of a server, feeping softly to itself, to look.

He sells many of his sculptures at fan conventions, but some of them (and also drawings of them) are available in his Etsy shop. They’re gratifyingly inexpensive and highly whimsical.

You can see loads of other examples of his work at his Feep o’the Morning blog, which has unusually specific categories like “Dervishes” and “Waffles.” If you like to play around with polymer clay, the site is a great source of inspiration to make sculptures of your own.

I’m beginning to suspect that my totem animal is the feeping creature, so I may get one to perch on my monitor and glare at when management asks me to make “one little change” to the code.

*This is the same programming tendency that causes us to refer to something done for historical reasons as being done “for hysterical raisins.” It passes the time.

This is the most adorably winsome little octopus I have ever seen and I desperately want a real one so I can cuddle it.

Etsy shop Emergent Glassworks creates all kinds of lovely glass jewelry, much of it on the spooky side: Eyeballs and carnivorous plants and mushrooms (or toadstools) and lots and lots of octopi. Octopodes. Octopuce. Whatever.

They’re available in an astonishing range of colors, as hairsticks or pendants, and you can even get matching tentacle earrings. The shop isn’t currently accepting custom orders, which is a pity, because I bet they could turn out some fantastic eldritch horrors. Still, the li’l octopi are reasonably Cthulhoid if you squint, and they so clearly want to be friends with you.

(via EPBOT)

With a name like Sid Graves, what else could the photographer behind Cemetery Prints specialize in? Kittens?

He’s been “specializing in unique visions of the afterlife” for over 20 years, and he does have some lovely stuff. His photo subjects include graveyard statuary, tombstone details, cemetery gates, interesting epitaphs, spooky landscapes, and scenes with photoedited ghosts. (Some of the category links on the site are amusing; my favorite is “Feet of the Afterlife.”) He sells lovely hand-signed prints quite inexpensively, and also offers some framed limited-edition stuff.

The site itself is a tad hard to navigate (particularly frustrating is that there’s no way to directly order a print from the galleries: Instead you have to go to the “Prints for Sale” section and then browse around until you find it; there’s not even a search feature). However, if you don’t mind a little digging you can find some lovely, evocative stuff quite reasonably. They’d make a lovely gift or a striking addition to a room.

There’s also a blog, plus a Facebook page in which he seems to post at least a few images that aren’t on the site (or certainly aren’t immediately obvious). They’re definitely worth a look.

Emily from T Shirt Printing is trying to drum up a little exposure for her business, and she’s doing it in a super-cool way: By offering one of my readers a free T-shirt custom-printed with a design of their choice.

[T]he winner’s design can be full color if they choose. We are using quite a new technique that is producing some really good results. Also he or she can choose whatever type of T-shirt they would like such as standard unisex fit, ladies fit, v neck etc. We can ship anywhere so that’s not a problem….All we ask is that you keep your design to A4 or smaller

The company is based in the UK but they ship worldwide, so any reader can play.

If you’re in the market for custom printed T-shirts or other items like hoodies or vests, these guys might be a good option; the company describes itself as “built from scratch by a group of people with more experience in T-shirt printing than we would like to admit.” You can get a quote online, so if you need shirts for some event or organization, check ’em out.

If you’re interested in having a custom shirt of your very own, leave a comment by Friday, February 15 and one person will be chosen at random.

Thanks, Emily!

Update:

The contest is over, and random.org spat back the magic number 6, which means Pixel Pixie gets the T-shirt. I shall put her in touch with Emily forthwith.

Thanks to everyone who played along!

It’s time for a bunch of shoe-related stuff that’s too disjointed for individual posts. Whee!

BoingBoing recently had a couple of posts featuring shoes decorated with false teeth: Apex Predator (first comment: “Wait til you see the tongues”) and Toothy Ladies Shoes. These could be DIY’d without too much trouble, and the false human teeth could be replaced with animal teeth used for taxidermy (on the women’s version at least; pointy teeth probably wouldn’t work so well on the soles of shoes).

Some retailers of interest include Hades Footwear (their site is unfortunately coy about wear to buy their products, although Steamtropolis carries a selection), Gentleman’s Emporium (both Men’s and Women’s styles, plus a whole subsection of Steampunk), Demonia, Iron Fist, and Sinister Soles (in particular I like these and these).

Also not exactly goth, but Julian Hakes’ Mojito shoes are awesomely weird. I can’t decide if they look comfortable or not.

This site is ridiculously NSFW and is likely to permanently scar small children and housepets. Proceed with appropriate caution.

Pornaments is pretty much exactly what the name would lead you to expect: A whole collection of whimsically-pornographic Christmas ornaments, just in case you feel like your tree isn’t complete without a teddy bear in assless chaps or some elves doing it doggie-style. They’re weirdly cute.

The ornaments are all the “Old World”-style silvered-glass-and-glitter that are often found in kitschy shapes,* which somehow makes them rather charming. Although some are blatantly non-family-safe, there are a number of them that are more stylized and won’t automatically give your in-laws apoplexy. (I do, however, think that the best use of these would be to quietly sneak one on to said in-laws’ tree and see how long it takes someone to notice.)

Anyway, if you’re looking for something really unique to add to the tree or use as a particularly-arresting gift topper, this is the place to look.

*Speaking of that, Merck does a whole line of Halloween-themed ornaments in that style.

Wow, does this bring back memories. Long ago, back in the Vinyl Age, records with accompanying storybooks (with audio cues to turn the pages) were hugely popular. Disney released “The Story and Song from the Haunted Mansion” in 1969, and when I was a kid I played this record until the grooves wore down.

This video is just a static image of the album cover instead of displaying the individual pages, but the whole soundtrack is here (bonus: The voice of the male teenager is a young Ron Howard).

Disney has also re-released the album on CD. According to the description, “It is packaged in a Digipak with the original booklet of Collin Campbell’s illustrations and text. When you place the CD in your computer a flash program runs which houses a gallery of the booklet and cover paintings without any text and which are printable.”

This should appeal to Elder Goths who remember the original album as well as to anyone else who appreciates a touch of the retro in their spookiness.

(via BoingBoing)

I have no skill at knitting, and I never regret that more than when I run across patterns like the ones at Erssie Knits.

Erssie Major is a UK knitter who has been featured in several magazines, and her work has a definite pagan/goth bent. She makes many of her patterns available online, either free (such as this cute calavera) or quite inexpensively (like this skully knit cap).

The site is a little hard to navigate, since some links seem to circle back on themselves and the sidebar isn’t consistent, but the patterns are worth a bit of digging. I love this goth glam hat, and the collection of symbols in the magickal throw is impressive (although it’d be nice if they were sold as a bundle in addition to individually).

She’s also got a blog where she features new creations. One of her latest is this great “punk skull” sweater; she notes that she’ll make a pattern available for it soon.

If you knit, definitely check out the collection. There are some great potential holiday gifts.

Update: – Apparently Erssie decided to clean up her site and ditch the patterns two days ago. You can still find them at Ravelry: If you don’t have an account and don’t want to register, get a username/password at BugMeNot. Just log in and search for “Erssie.” (Bah.)

Intrepid reader Terri dropped me a line to ask if I’d heard of Madame Talbot’s Victorian Lowbrow; the name sounded vaguely familiar, so I dug around and discovered that I mentioned them briefly clear back in–yikes–2007, when they were just an eBay storefront. Now they’re all growed up, and they have all kinds of awesome stuff.

They’ve got posters with that weird overly-detailed vibe often seen in vintage illustrations, one-of-a-kind curio exhibits such as a collection of antique poison labels, vintage memento mori that range from coffins to pauper’s burial suits, and that’s just in the first row of links. Clicking around the site is like wandering through your elderly aunt’s attic…the one with the mysterious past and troubling interest in dead things. It’s really quite awesome.

They also buy weird stuff, so if you have “odd and strange curio items and artifacts such as circus sideshow, carnival, Houdini, dime museum, macabre curiosities, Egyptian mummies, Egyptian artifacts, antique real human shrunken heads, old trophy skulls and other human relics, Medieval to 19th century torture devices, chastity belts, and folk art, strange carvings,” or any of the other things mentioned in the site’s rather long list, they might take it off your hands. I particularly love their, “Free identification of Material. Discretion is assured.” note, as well as the information that if you’re selling an entire collection you should call and ask for “Lucky.” It’s all so…clandestine.

The holidays are coming, so if you’ve got a special morbid someone on your list (or just want to augment your own wish list), check this place out.

(Thanks, Terri!)