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.

Link

Travis Louie’s wonderful, whimsical acrylics are done in the style of formal Victorian portrait photography; it just happens that their subject matter is a little bit on the peculiar side.

Many of the portraits in his gallery are accompanied by descriptions which are nearly as entertaining as the pictures. There’s Ophelia, last monarch of the sea monkeys; Hypno-Krampus, who hypnotizes children into believing that they are chickens or chartered accountants; and The Vamp, who came out of Scotland in the 1860s, reappeared on a USO tour in 1940, and was last seen as one of Joey Heatherton’s backup dancers.

Link (via Spooky Moon)

Alas, Vampira has finally removed the “un” from “undead.” Ruth Waytz of blogging.la writes:

With a heavy heart I deliver the sad news that our friend Maila Nurmi, famous for her portrayal of Vampira, has passed at age 86.

Maila passed away peacefully in her sleep at home.

Funeral arrangements are pending legal steps as Maila had no relatives. Her friends are trying to get her a spot at Hollywood Forever Cemetery and will likely plan some sort of hearse procession for her.

She was the fashion inspiration of many a little goth, and it’s a pity she’s passed.

(via BoingBoing)

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)

Because you can’t ever have too many knitted eyeballs.

Mary Jane, Midge, and Mink have created these knitted eyeballs and posted the free pattern online. They say that they like to offer them on a plate at their house. They’re my kind of people.

Their post includes links to several other knitted-eyeball patterns. Apparently eyeballs are a fairly popular thing to knit. There’s probably a thesis project in there somewhere.

Link (via CRAFT)

There is no unwieldy way to describe these things.

These are little individual “fence pickets” with sticky backing designed to corral the electrical cords and stereo wires that make such an untidy mess along baseboards. The pickets are a little bit twee for my taste, but this would be great with either tombstones or cemetery-type iron fencing.

The site doesn’t mention what they’re made of, but I’d assume they’re plastic. The backing appears to be adhesive foam. This would be a fun DIY project, particularly if you could find precut shapes.

Link (via CRAFT)

365 Halloween has a tutorial for making picture holders out of clay and craft wire. The example they use is for little pumpkins, but it would be easy to do skulls or spiders using the same general technique.

Put together a bunch of these with wire of different heights and display a thicket of spooky pictures.

Link

Artist Jon Sasaki created the “Evil Decoder” by adding a Ouija planchette to a DJ’s large subwoofer.

A modified subwoofer which vibrates a Ouiji Pointer over Ouiji letters, spelling out the sinister directives that have been encoded in all popular music as subliminal messages.

This would be an entertaining addition to stereo speaker, although you’d have to use very lightweight materials for the vibrations to move the planchette around.

Link (via CRAFT)

I’d never heard of Just for Laughs before running across this clip because Shadowboy is three and the only thing I get to watch on TV is Barney. The Candid Camera-esque format doesn’t usually appeal to me, but this particular gag is funny.

(via The Presurfer)

I picked up a wooden dollhouse kit on clearance a while back, with the intention of “haunting” it. (I’ll probably get to that around the time Shadowboy is in college.) Haunted houses seem to be popular amongst miniaturists, so if you want to do one of your own there’s plenty of inspiration to draw from.

You can spookify commercially-available furniture and accessories, either through distress or embellishment. If you want the items to look old and abandoned you can break bits off, splatter them with paint, and use a craft knife to warp their boards. Alternately, use paint and polymer clay to turn them into something monstrous.

Christine A. Verstraete is a talented miniaturist who’s taken the latter approach, creating items like the chair seen here. She’s even sculpted a collection of creepy plants for her spooky conservatory.

CDHM showcases “artisanal” miniatures, and there’s loads of inspiration here: Miniature ouija boards, witches’ cupboards, skull planters, goth dollies….

For inspiration of a slightly different sort, The Block is a set of miniature row houses in a bad neighborhood. The interiors include a crack house, adult bookstore, and brothel.

And finally, my favorite dollhouse of all: Madiganhouse’s Haunted Mansion. Secret passages! Lurking ghouls! Gargoyles! Wrought iron! Heck, I want to live here. They’ve also done a witch house and a smaller haunted house, but neither are quite as ambitious as the mansion.

So even if your landlord won’t let you paint the place black and put up wall sconces, you can always turn your creative energy toward a miniature goth mansion.