For those of you in the Eastern US (or those willing to travel), the folks behind the Eastern Haunter’s Convention have a new venture: Halloween University was born out of the extreme popularity of seminar classes at the convention.

The initial early demand for seminars was so strong that two divisions of Halloween University were formed: The Professional School & The Public School.

The Professional School is geared for the serious haunt professional interested in furthering his or her knowledge. The classes are more expensive to attend, but allow us to bring in some of the heaviest hitters in the industry to attend. These classes are much more specific and advanced. In additional, these classes also allow for smaller groups giving you more intimate feel and personal attention. The knowledge of the professional classes earns you credits towards your Halloween University Degree.

The Public School division of classes will cover a much broader spectrum range of classes. These classes will have a lower cost, but will still cover many of the important topics that you will want to hear. They will just be a bit broader in scope.

Many of the classes are aimed at people creating “haunts” at Halloween, but several of their offerings–such as carving styrofoam and working with Monster Mud–would be useful skills for anyone interested in doing a little dark decorating.

“Public School” classes run about $10-$25 and begin April 10. The HU is located in King of Prussia, PA, so if you’re in the area you might want to check it out.

If you’re looking for any kind of cast hardware for home decor or craft projects, look no further than Whitechapel Ltd. They’ve got all kinds of insanely cool items, from doorknobs to antique key blanks to reproduction hardware.

They also offer a variety of technical guides for doing things like antiquing brass or choosing historically-accurate handles.

You can go a long way toward gothing up a piece of furniture with the appropriate hardware, and adding easily-removable items like doorknobs is a good way to bring a personal touch to rooms that you don’t want to permanently alter (like rented apartments or bedrooms in a parent’s house). Although some of the items at Whitechapel are pricey (like the $875 solid-brass lion door knocker), many are surprisingly affordable. The iron bat knocker above, for instance, is only $34. I know what I’m asking for next Christmas.

If you’ve got a steampunk project in mind, or just want to bring an antique touch to a room, check these guys out.

Link (via Steampunk Workshop)

Here’s a neat site I recently stumbled across. Urban Threads peddles edgy designs for machine- and hand embroidery, and also offers their designs as high-resolution clip art.

Their site features a project gallery and blog and, best of all, they frequently offer free designs for download. For January they celebrated Edgar Allan Poe’s birthday with an adorable “Nevermore” design (now back in their shop, but you can also see a finished version at craftershock), and their current free logo patterns could easily be repurposed as a personalized skull-and-needle-crossbones design.

Their downloadable patterns are very cheap–about $3 each–and wonderfully whimsical. Many are cute without being saccharine (I’ve already bought their Abducted pattern to stitch on a shirt for Shadowboy), and there are several design “collections” like tattoos and robots that would look great on a set of tea towels or throw pillows.

The Grandma’s Graphics site has a nice collection of public domain artwork from vintage children’s books.

From Harry Clarke to 1890’s storybooks, if you’re looking for unique images or clipart for use on your web pages or in other design or craft projects you’ve come to the right place. There’s a treasury here at Grandma’s Graphics that you probably won’t find anywhere else online. Some of these graphics are quite large and take time to load, but be patient, they’re worth the wait.

The free images are 72 dpi (Web resolution), but for a small fee they also offer higher resolution scans. These would be a great resource for design projects. In particular, check out the Avatars page, which features all kinds of creepy visages from works by Poe and Goethe.

Link (via BoingBoing)

Haunt Style recently linked to this site, listing all of the old Topps “monster stickers” from the 70s. Since I have links for a bunch of sites that feature weird/gothic/horror fonts, I thought I’d share.

These are a great resource for party invitations, craft stencils, Web graphics, and so forth. Nearly all are free for noncommercial use.

1001 Fonts – Heaps of freeware, shareware, and commercial fonts. See their Holiday, Horror, Grunge, and Warped categories.

All-4-Free Fonts: Spooky Fonts – Freeware and shareware Halloween fonts, as well as lots of non-spooky fonts.

Dafont – Lots of gothic fonts and dingbats.

Fontenstein – Comprehensive site of freeware and shareware Halloween fonts.

Horror Fonts – Large selection of fonts.

Specialty Fonts – Lots of spooky fonts.

ThemeWorld: Font Empire – Gothic/Horror and Medieval categories.

Wanted Fonts – Lots of unusual fonts. See their Gothic, Holiday, and Horror categories.

WebFontList – Very large site. Check out their Alien, Creepy, and Gothic categories for Halloween-type fonts.

World of Horror: Fonts – Small selection of spooky fonts.

Here’s a fairly new blog with a lot of promise. The Obscure Hollow is devoted to “the love of haunted film decor.”

A work in progress now for over 6 years and now a blog of darker aesthetics. This is a mature gathering of refinement, Old film Design, music, vintage, beauty, art, culinary, theatre, films, books, obscure history, interior design, architecture etc.. all at a darker level.

It features screencaps and commentary about all sorts of atmospheric movies. If you’re looking to create a spooky decorating scheme or interested in creepy fashions, this might be an excellent resource for little details.

Link

The holidays are coming! Everybody duck!

If you’ve got someone with morbid tendencies on your gift list and would like to branch out beyond “it’s got a bat on it, wrap it up” approach to gift-giving, here are a few ideas for dark yet tasteful items.

Absinthe and its related paraphernalia is always welcome, if only for the ambiance. I previously blogged about purchasing the real deal here, although since restrictions in the U.S. have recently been relaxed it might now be possible to buy it from domestic vendors. Spoons, glasses, and accessory “starter kits” are all pretty easy to find, and there’s even a brewing kit for making your own. You could also give a framed vintage poster, one of the many history books, or Absinthe-scented shaving cream or perfume.

Jewelry is another good option. Over at Coffin Gems, artist Mordaunte offers semiprecious stones cut like toe-pincher coffins. She has a wide variety of items for both men and women, and I like the subtlety of the designs; you don’t really notice that they’re coffins until you look closely. Pushin’ Daisies also has some nice-quality items, including skull cufflinks and crossbone buttons. A particularly nice item, especially for those interested in Victoriana, is jewelry made of Whitby jet. The Whitby Jet Heritage Center and Whitby Jet Jewellery (sic) both have some lovely pieces.

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Here’s a site I wish I didn’t know about. I already have a bad habit of buying fabric that catches my eye, even if I don’t know what I’m going to do with it. Then along comes a company that will custom-print fabric in any design I want. Ai yi yi.

Spoonflower was founded by a coalition of crafters and geeks (one of whom used to run Lulu, a print-on-demand book publisher) and is housed in an old sock mill in North Carolina. They will let you upload a file containing any pattern your little black heart desires and they will print it on high-quality cotton fabric for $18/yard (or $5 for a swatch). There is no minimum order, which is particularly awesome.

They launched as a “closed beta” in May 2008, and as of October there were over 10,000 users registered for their service. They’ve got a nice little community of crafters built up, many of whom share their patterns and the resulting creations on the site. (Your uploaded patterns, incidentally, remain private unless you choose to make them public.) They also note that they plan to eventually let pattern designers sell their custom fabrics through the site, which would be a great boon to the Etsy crowd.

This would be the perfect resource for creating truly unique and original fabrics for apparel or crafts. There have been many times that I’ve searched in vain for the right fabric; now I can design the right fabric.

If you’re an artist, you could have your work printed on fabric for one-of-a-kind wearable art. You could also turn your childrens’ artwork into something unique; it’d be fun to do a quilt made of custom swatches featuring a collection of scribbles. I know my mom would melt.

Thanks, Spoonflower. I’ll name you in the eventual bankruptcy paperwork.

(via MAKE)

I’ve previously mentioned my predilection for steampunk, both in design and fashion.

Divine Caroline recently featured a roundup of steampunk clothing (thanks, Shadaughter!), which prompted me to dig around for related links.

There are at least two LiveJournal communities devoted to steampunk clothing, Steamfashion and Steamy Stitches. There’s also a Flickr group.

Aether Emporium offers a very large list of steampunk fashion resources.

AskMen has an article about modern men’s clothing that work for this style. They also offer a few tips for wearing these pieces as part of one’s everyday wardrobe without looking…eccentric.

Threadbanger did a Week of Steampunk feature, providing directions for making several accessories.

The Steampunk Workshop site offers all kinds of resources, including a number of project tutorials.

Brass Goggles is a blog devoted to the subject, and Steampunk Magazine is a rather nice Webzine.

For those in California, there’s even a Steampunk Convention.

Hm. I think I feel a series of costumes coming on.

There are a zillion hot sauces out there, so it stands to reason that a few have spooky names. If you happen to like things on the hot side, here are a few you might try.

Haunted Hot Sauce products come packed in their own little wooden coffins and include mixes such as “Undertaker’s Undead,” “Mortician’s Mold,” “Ghoul Drool,” and “Fleshfeast.”

All Hot ‘N Bottled offers “Bat’s Brew,” “Toad Sweat,” “Vampfire,” and “Pain is Good.”

eXtremefood specializes in “After Death” sauce. The main ingredient is habaneros, and the stuff also includes cayennes and pepper resin. I think you’d be better off buying a bottle, using the contents to kill weeds, and refilling the bottle with something reasonable like Tabasco. They also offer the milder Sweet Death, plus Sudden Death, Muerte Sauce, and Death Rain.

Various other brands include Devil’s Brew, Death Wish, Dia de los Muertos (with skeleton keychain!), Scorned Woman, Voodoo Juice, Widow (with a spider on the bottle), Boneyard Brew, Hell’s Inferno, Brain Damage, Bad to the Bone, Sea Witch, and Satan’s Blood, to name just a few.

The Day of the Dead is coming up soon (November 1); if you’re planning a party, pick up a few bottles of thematic hot sauce to give as favors.