Creative team Ransom & Mitchell specialize in “photographic-based digital art scenarios and portraits,” combining makeup, costumes, set design, and digital manipulation to create wonderfully evocative art which tends toward the dark side.

They recently did a series called Rough & Ready Sideshow which used handcrafted sets and vintage props to create an old-time sideshow full of spooky freaks.

If you’re handy with Photoshop it’d be fun to theme a party around a stripped-down version of the same idea. Create a generic circus backdrop (or, as a last resort, use a blank wall as a backdrop and then ‘shop in an appropriate background), get a few carnival-type props from a thrift store, and have friends dress as sideshow freaks. Take everyone’s photograph, then after the party you can digitally manipulate the photos to give them extra heads or tentacles instead of legs.

Be sure to check out the rest of Ransom & Mitchell’s portfolio too (a few images are slightly NSFW); their photos all seem like images from some dark fairy tale.

(via BoingBoing)

Wow. Wowwowwow.

Last October, photographer Tim Tadder was inspired by artist Krisztianna’s Dia de los Muertos sculptures and decided to do a photo series of the four seasons represented by calaveras. Krisztianna painted the models’ faces and created their headdresses, and stylist Julia Reeser did their costumes. The setting for the shoot was “a stormy day over the recently wild fire scorched earth. The combination of color, destruction and foreboding storm makes a truly surreal tribute to the traditions of the Dia De Los Muertos holiday.”

The result was Las Muertas, and they are just stunningly beautiful. They’re also a phenomenal cosplay resource; although they look really intricate, similar could be assembled from carefully-chosen thrift store finds and silk flowers. I think it’s the combination of colors that make these so striking; the clothing and face paint beautifully match the seasons they represent.

It’d be fun to do a group cosplay with all of the seasons, or choose a favorite season–I vote for autumn–and make a matching couples costume.

(via Laughing Squid)

Way back in the Cretaceous Era 80s, when I was a young lass with much more time than money, I saw a clothing store window display featuring vests with neckties appliqued to the front; the ties were cut in half and stitched at an angle, with the wide front* on one side and the skinnier end on the other, so they gave the illusion of wrapping around the whole vest. I thought, “Heck, I could do that,” so I went to the thrift store and got a secondhand vest and a bunch of interesting neckties and did. For way, way less money than the originals cost. I’ve made several of them since; they’re an attractive gift that can be made in an afternoon, and it’s fun to match the necktie patterns to the recipients’ tastes. To make one, simply cut the ties in half at an angle, remove the weird core fabric that’s used for stiffening, and slipstitch the tie halves to the front of the vest; turn the raw ends under at the seam where the vest fronts meet the vest back (or if you’re feeling really ambitious, pull out the stitching there, tuck the raw ends inside, and re-stitch).

I was reminded of the vests recently when I saw this tutorial for a corset belt made of old neckties. Ties are a great crafting resource: They’re usually made of nice, silky material (sometimes actually silk), they come in every color and pattern imaginable, and they’re available dirt cheap at thrift stores. It’s easy to find secondhand ties in gothy colors, but if you want something special just google “Halloween neckties” to find retailers: Tie Guys, Ties.com, Absolute Ties, and Zazzle have lots to choose from.

There are a zillion different projects which use repurposed neckties. In addition to the lace-edged scarf in the photo above (which Pinterest credited to Etsy shop Creative Restorations, although they don’t carry it now), you can make handbags, roses, quilts, skirts, and even a decoupaged mirror. You can make necktie snakes and pretty pumpkins. Decorate with necktie throw pillows, lampshades, and wreaths. If none of those appeal, google “necktie crafts” to find a plethora of other ideas.

These projects are also a wonderful way to create mementos from ties with special meaning: The necktie your husband wore on your first date, or the favorite tie of a deceased relative.

Bonus: By dint of their source material necktie crafts involve relatively small pieces of fabric, so the same design ideas can also be used for other scrap fabric you might have on hand. Projects like the corset belt and stripey pumpkins would be a great way to use scrap Halloween fabric.

*Not that any tie was particularly wide in the 80s. We had skinny neckties and pastel men’s shirts and we liked it that way. Now get off my lawn.

Laughing Squid recently posted about a Kickstarter for Crop Circle Towels, featuring woven designs inspired by the “mysterious” formations. I’m mentioning it here because I am dumb and it had never occurred to me to consider crop circles as a design element. There will be a short pause whilst I slap my forehead really hard.

Although some crop circles are just, y’know, circular, a lot of the more recent ones have intricate geometric designs. They’d be lovely on a quilt, either appliqued as part of the pattern or outlined in quilted stitching. A sampler of different formations would be a fun cross-stitch project, and they could also be used as stencils for painting walls or furniture.

Doing an image search on “crop circles” brings up loads of photos that could be used as reference or inspiration. I love this montage (from here); wouldn’t that be a gorgeous quilt?

If you don’t have the CAD skills or graphic software to translate a photo into a pattern, search “crop circle designs” for black-and-white drawings that can just be printed out and used directly. (In doing that search, I also discovered that crop circle tattoos are a thing. Huh. Anyway, this one is pretty.)

If you’ve got the ambition and space, you could also get back to the roots (so to speak) of the designs and plant a garden in one of the simpler patterns; you could use pebbles to create the lines between plants, or just intersperse plants of different colors.

Even if you don’t believe that The Truth is Out There, these patterns are attractive in their own right and would be a fun way to add a little geometric weirdness to your surroundings.

This nail art is six levels of meta. It’s a riff on the biblical Ten Plagues of Egypt, only updated with “modern” plagues. Some of them, like, anti-vaxxers and gun violence, are sound choices; others, like NFL scandals, are a bit more…niche. (I do like the hazmat suit and the drippy blood, though.)

This made me wonder if nail art featuring the original Ten Plagues was a thing, and of COURSE it is. The same business responsible for the Modern Plagues nails, Midrash Manicures, actually sells decals depicting cow skulls, googly-eyed flies, and phlegmatic-looking frogs. A quick google also turns up some neat freehand versions like this one at 10 Blank Canvases and these (found at Marjorie Ingall).

Incidentally, Midrash Manicures has done different “modern plagues” for the past few years; you can see the whole collection here. I’m not sure why iPhones qualify as a plague, but whatever.

Passover begins April 3 and Easter is on April 5, so there’s still time to paint your nails with cutesy little reminders of divine horrors.

Bonus links: If you just can’t get enough plaguey goodness, check out the Ten Plagues Hand Puppets, Masks of the Ten Plagues, and the brilliant Passover Bag of Plagues.

(via Amber Dawn)

“You Got Your Nine Inch Nails in My Taylor Swift!”

This mashup by Isosine shouldn’t work at all. Instead, I sort of want Taylor Swift and Trent Reznor to cut an album together.

If you bought any craft pumpkins on clearance after Halloween last year, here’s the perfect project. If you didn’t, well…that was silly of you. Keep this in mind for next Halloween.

The Merrythought did a neat tutorial for Design*Sponge for carving constellations in Jack-o’-Lanterns. I love how restrained and elegant they look.

Their method uses real pumpkins, but there’s no reason why you couldn’t do the same thing with craft foam pumpkins like Funkins. As they suggest, you could do one or more small pumpkins with one constellation each, or carve several constellations into a larger pumpkin.

They suggest spray-painting the pumpkins black, and that’s certainly the most dramatic presentation (it has the added benefit of making the “stars” look like they’re hanging in midair when the lights are out); you could also paint them white and use purple or blue lights for better contrast.

Drilling holes and etching straight lines is refreshingly easy, so even those of us without any pumpkin-carving mojo should be able to play along. It’d be fun to do the zodiac constellations of family members, or a set of them associated with a particular myth (such as Orion and his dogs, Canis Major and Canis Minor).

Artist Ashley Gilreath made this lovely portrait necklace, entitled, “I Am Who They Were,” featuring photos of various ancestors. There are several additional views in the Reliquaries section of her portfolio (scroll down toward the bottom).

This is a really striking piece and would be a great way to showcase photos of people who were important to you. A “family tree” one featuring notable ancestors would be a thoughtful gift for someone interested in genealogy, and a necklace with thumbnails of goth icons–anyone from Poe to Siouxsie Sioux–would be a very unique accessory.

Gilreath cast the silver and bronze frames herself, but similar small frames can be found at craft stores in the jewelry or scrapbooking section, at Amazon and Etsy, and at jewelry suppliers like Fire Mountain Gems. Most seem to only have a single place at the top to attach a chain, but if you wanted to achieve the same multi-strand chain effect of the original piece you could use a little solder. (A soldering iron isn’t difficult to use, just don’t put it down and then reach blindly behind you to pick it up again and grab the hot end. Like…nobody I know has ever done. Heh. Heh.)

If you’ve got photos languishing in a drawer, it’s time to dig them out and turn them into a conversation piece.

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, BoifromIpanema has a great tutorial for adding a bloody anatomical heart to a shirt or blouse.

His instructions begin, “draw an anatomical heart onto the front of your shirt,” which means that his artistic skills are significantly greater than my own. If you’re in the same boat, just find an image of a heart that you like and transfer it onto the fabric. Searching Google Images for “anatomical heart outline” returns a lot of simplified drawings that are suitable for tracing, and Home Stories A to Z has a roundup of various methods for transferring images; choose whichever one looks easiest.

The rest of the process is pretty straightforward, painting the heart with dye and letting it spread a little. The tutorial suggests using tie-dye resist to prevent the dye from spreading too much, but you could probably omit that step; the heart should look fine surrounded with a little seeping blood.

This is an amusing antidote to the sugary-sweet imagery you usually see on Valentine’s Day. Give a shirt to your sweetie, gift friends with a matching pair, or wear one yourself to make strangers vaguely nervous.

The When Geeks Wed blog posted a short article about an “eclectic wedding” trade show, and one of the photos they featured was this eyeball shoes-and-bowtie ensemble by Frankie Lynn’s Emporium. I really like the fact that it’s a matched set; it’s perfect for a party or other formal affair.

(The bowtie also has fangs, which is kind of adorable.)

The ties are still available for purchase, but the shoes don’t currently seem to be (although she does offer simpler flats featuring a single eyeball).

Fortunately, flat-backed eyes are widely available for doll-making and other crafts, so DIYing the heels would be reasonably straightforward. You could cluster a bunch of small eyes for a spider-like effect, or use colorful reptile eyes to make the shoes monstrous. Glue sequins or narrow ribbon around the eye to conceal the edges.

Glass or solid acrylic eyes would work fine for the shoes, but it’d probably be best to use plastic or some other lightweight material for bowties, hair ribbons, garters or other items that might be warped out of shape.

For something really over-the-top, check out Frankie Lynn’s blog post about her tentacle-tastic Octo-Shoes.