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)

Boo Davis of Quiltsrÿche combines traditional quilting techniques with a rock sensibility to create “modern heirloom quilts that look like they were made by your metal-loving, half-blind Grandma.” She will personalize your quilt with silkscreening or fragments of your old rock T-shirts.

The skull shown here is a tweaked log cabin design. This would be really gorgeous done in luxe fabrics like satin or brocade, too.

Link (via CRAFT)

Madame Alexander dolls are generally so syrupy-sweet that one finds oneself scrabbling for the nearest insulin vial. However, their 2006 collection included an (admittedly-cutesy) homage to Alfred Hitchcock in the form of vignettes from Psycho and The Birds.

The one for The Birds is almost beneath us, consisting of nothing more than a blonde doll with some fake crows attached to it, but the Psycho one looks reasonably easy to re-create (for much less than the $115 price tag–yeeow) and would make a cute desk accessory or coffee table accent.

The materials list looks pretty straightforward:

• Blonde doll
• A couple of doll bath towels
• Doll-sized bathtub, preferably white and claw-footed
• Loop of wire to support shower curtain
• Curtain rings (depending upon the size of the model, large jewelry “jump rings” might work)
• Plastic for shower curtain
• Flexible tubing for the shower “pipe”
• Black paper cutout of Norman and his knife
• Base to support the model – painted wood should be fine, but you could get fancy and use mosaic tile to simulate a bathroom floor

The shower tubing could be silver-painted plastic (like a soda straw), but since it’ll be supporting the shower curtain attachment you’ll probably want to strengthen it with some wire inside.

Many items such as bedding come in transparent plastic zipper bags, which should be about the right weight for a doll-sized curtain. You could also use some translucent white fabric with a fairly tight weave.

The bathtub and accessories should be fairly easy to find at toy stores or shops that specialize in dollhouse miniatures; much depends upon the size that you want your finished model to be.

Full-size “Psycho” shower curtains are available online, and a photograph of one of those could be printed and cut out to stick to the curtain.

The doll could be posed by sticking heavy wire up through the bottom of the tub and into one of her legs.

Check out the About.com miniatures section for lots of resources for creating miniature vignettes. Soon you won’t be able to look at a doll without thinking of creative ways to mutilate it. (Not that some of us don’t do that already.)

I ran across this image on The Cranky Professor‘s site. She gets a bit ranty on this particular subject, but I do have to agree that when I see a kid–it’s always a kid–wearing a Che T-shirt I have to fight the urge to gently take them aside and suggest that maybe they should crack a history book. (“You aren’t being edgy, dear, you’re just advertising that your grasp of history doesn’t extend earlier than about the time The Rembrandts were popular. Run along now.”)

This shirt, I’d wear.

The Death Report invites you to enter the date you were born, then tells you who died on that day. Nobody of any great interest has checked out on the date I checked in, other than Jack the Ripper’s last known victim (and I already knew about her).

Still, isn’t this the cutest little Grim Reaper you’ve ever seen? I love his li’l necktie.

You know what’s an underutilized area for spooky decor? The bathroom.

Fortunately, Crafter Baba-Jaga has come to the rescue with this original crocheted toilet-paper cozy (don’t think about that phrase too hard) she’s dubbed “Horror Manor.”

She sells the plans on Dawanda, which looks sort of like an overseas version of Etsy. The site is all in German, although her Flickr set is in English.

I’ve never in my wildest dreams wanted to play host to a toilet-paper cozy, but this one is mighty cute.

(via CRAFT)

Zakka Life, a very crafty blogger, has posted instructions for making this super-easy table decoration out of inexpensive black lace. She suggests that smaller versions could be made for placemats, too.

Her version is meant to be spread on top of the tablecloth, but you could also tack the web to a tablecloth with a needle and thread for a more permanent decoration. Then you wouldn’t have to worry about bumping the design and wrinkling it during dinner either.

It’d be cute to embroider little spiders on cloth napkins to go along with the tablecloth and placemats, too.

Link

Terry of Bent Objects makes wry, wonderful sculptures out of everyday objects, with little more than twisted bits of wire and inspired posing. Every one of them is original and splendid.

There’s also a “Really Bent” adjunct site for mature audiences. I’m happy to live in a world where there’s such a thing as Adult produce sculptures.

Link (via MAKE)

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)

The Baking Bites site has some lovely recipes for Spiderweb Tarts, Gingerbread Skeletons, and these entirely awesome fang-bitten cupcakes.

I baked my cupcakes, used the cupcake-filling technique I used on my devil’s food cupcakes to fill the cakes up with pureed cherry pie filling (canned or homemade) and topped them off with white icing to best accentuate the red bite marks. I made the marks using a skewer dipped in leftover cherry filling, making sure to leave a clear impression of a fang bite, rather than just a red streak on top of the cake.

I feel that all Halloween party recipes should be tested extensively beforehand, so if I start baking right now I should have these perfected by next October.

Link (via BoingBoing)