Bat Costume – Shagpoke Studios makes custom creature costumes and accessories. This bat costume they recently did for the Vancouver Parks Board is awesome.
Skin – Horror novel by Patrick Logan, the first in the “Insatiable” series (sequels include Crackers and Flesh), featuring a Wendigo-ish-sounding monster.
Murder Pamphlets – Online collection of the lurid “true crime” pamphlets that were popular in the 19th Century.
Spooky Knit Patterns – Some free patterns from Lion Brand Yarn. (You have to register at the site to access them, which is why the link goes to some photos at CRAFT.) I like the witch-finger gloves.
Potion Jars – Adorable little prop jars made of old pill bottles covered with polymer clay.
Twin Peaks Gothic – “Every weekend, there is a Milford wedding. You never hear what happened to the last bride. ”
Gravestone Dog Toy – Cute plush gravestone with mildly-inexplicable candy corn bats. There’s a haunted house version, too. (Hat tip to Pixel Pixie)
DIY Palmistry Hand – Tutorial for turning a thrifted mannequin hand into a pretty display piece.
Hillary White – Artist whose portfolio includes a bunch of portraits featuring movie villains cuddling adorable animals. Geyser of Awesome has collected several examples. Godzilla snuggling fawns is a perfect combination for those of us old enough to remember this, but I think she really missed a trick giving lambs to Jason Voorhees instead of Hannibal Lecter.
50 Little Goth Problems – “Accumulating a Victorian-esque collection of artful clutter is all well and good until it comes to dusting it all.”
Blood Lollipops – Easy instructions for making lollipops that look like they have swirls of blood inside.
Kabbalah Vodka – Russian vodka which riffs on the old belief that Jewish religious rites required the blood of infants by including a hand-blown glass baby in the bottle.
Medusa’s Web – Tim Powers has a new “secret history” novel, this one involving Rudolph Valentino’s death. He discusses his inspiration here.
Crocheted Owl Pellet – The site this post links to doesn’t appear to exist any more so I don’t know if there was a pattern, but this awesome owl pellet with teensy crocheted bones can serve as inspiration if nothing else.
Cult of Weird – A “museum of oddities and obscurities” with categories like “From the Grave” and “Weird Crime.”
Glyn Smith – Bleaq showcases some of the illustrator’s dark, vintage-feeling works. (via Beans)
Return Home – New serialized podcast drama which has been compared to Lost and Twin Peaks.
Greatest Openings in Horror – Shock Till You Drop has a new series which explores the greatest film openings in horror history.
The Badgermin – It’s a theramin made from a taxidermied badger. More than anything in the world, I would like to know what train of thought ends with “a theramin made from a taxidermied badger.”
Halloween Spider Surprise Cake – Easy idea for a Halloween cake, although I still think it’d be more fun to do with live tarantulas. (Hat tip to Pixel Pixie)
Roadkill Carpet – Soft, snuggly carpet with a tufted-yarn, bloodily mangled “fox” squished across one corner. Fairly pricey, but possible inspiration for a latch-hook version.
Games for Halloween – Partial text of a 1912 book with lots of suggestions for period parlor games.
1930s “Blue Monday” – The Orkestra Obsolete covers New Order’s hit using only instruments that were available in 1933. It’s sort of a weird niche, but it works. (Hat tip to Pixel Pixie)
Alice Isn’t Dead – New “dark fictional” podcast from the creators of Welcome to Night Vale.
@ZombieProblms – Amusing parody account which explores the plight of the undead.
Space Age Hair Fashions – Neil Gaiman tweeted this with the comment, “When the aliens land, and we are judged, I am hoping someone submits this 1960s film in our defense: #SpaceHair.” Um…yeah.
Mourning Victorians – Some of the rules and regulations involving “proper” mourning behavior.
Alternative Merit Badges – Merit badges “from a world where scouting is a lot more fun.” Features accomplishments like Grave Robbing, Mind Control, and Necromancy. (via Spooky Moon)
Belarusian band Stary Olsa does covers of rock songs using Medieval instruments, and they are kind of awesome. The video below is their cover of Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall,” and Open Culture has a collection of other videos by the group.
They’re currently running a Kickstarter for an album of Medieval covers (entitled, delightfully, “Old Time Rock n Roll”) which would include songs by Metallica, Pink Floyd, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the Beatles, Deep Purple, and Nirvana.
Some of their past albums are available on Amazon and iTunes, including the intriguing-looking Drygula and Totentanz.
Persephone is the goddess of flowers and is adorable and smart and she probably only wears pastels and at the same time she’s the queen of hell and if that’s not life goals I don’t know what is
— romanovtrash
I wonder if Medusa uses one big pillow or a whole bunch of little ones.
— sween
If wishes were horses, there’d never again be uncertainty over whether or not someone blew out all his birthday candles with a single breath
— EmoPhilips
[phone sex with a psychic] “Tell me what I’m wearing.”
— Tommytoughstuff
So disappointed in science journalism for writing about “zombie bees” while ignoring The World’s Most Obvious Portmanteau
— wonderella
Surely all exorcisms are non-consensual. Unless you have a really lonely demon who just wants to go home.
— neilhimself
[walking by Goth kids dressed in black]
3-year-old: I can see them.
Me: I can, too.
3: They’re bad ninjas.
— XplodingUnicorn
Okay, I was originally going to only comment on this sofa, but the more I look at this Etsy shop the more I’m convinced the whole thing is a colossal prank. So let’s start from the top.
An Etsy shop called Ultra Violet Production House offers the Crust Couch, which they describe as “large black couch decorated with white paint pen, sewing supplies, patches.” Prices begin at $5,000US, which is spendy, but okay, fair enough; it’s an “art piece” and you’re paying for the workmanship. However, UVPH’s About page consists entirely of these two sentences:
Ultra Violet Production House provides customers with high quality sculpture materials and fabrication guidance for all original works.
Buyers assume responsibility for the realization of materials received based on tutorials sent to them at the point of purchase.
So you don’t get a couch that looks like the photo, you get a plain couch, sewing supplies, white paint pens, punk band patches, and instructions for decorating your own damn couch. This is the part where I was going to be outraged over the idea of paying a ridiculous amount of money for a DIY project (not to mention the fact that generations of punks are rolling over in their graves at the notion of paying $5K for a couch), but as I look through some of UVPH’s other listings there’s no way this isn’t a joke. If the Upcycled Canon Lens Mug wasn’t a tipoff, the Justice Fedora would be.
So, um, ha, I guess? It’s such an Andy Kaufman-esque set of listings that it isn’t so much funny as just sort of bizarre.
However, the couch is kind of cool and there’s no reason why you couldn’t actually DIY one with a bunch of band patches and a (preferably thrifted) couch or armchair.
“The appliances of bachelor Steve Fleegman have had enough. Too much pizza, too much mess, just too much. The appliances will now finally fight back against their abusive human master.”
Emo Philips voices the blender and Kipleigh Brown is the dishwasher, which makes this weird little gem particularly amusing.
Little Stag Studio – Artist Kelly Rene Jelinek makes faux taxidermy mounts out of fabric, and they look like something you’d find peeking out of a forest in Narnia. Mental Floss has some examples. (Hat tip to Pixel Pixie)
Spider Embryo – Microscopic image of a house spider developing inside its egg. There should be plush toys that look like this.
Spooky Converted Church for Sale – A church, complete with graveyard, has been converted to a three-bedroom home and is up for sale. (Hat tip to Pixel Pixie)
Celtic Ouija Table – Celtic knotwork enthusiast Charles turned a secondhand table into a gorgeous Ouija board. (Thanks, Charles!)
Reasons I Would Not Have Been Burned as a Witch – Although this is written as comedy, it’s actually a pretty incisive look at just how witch-burnings (or any kind of mob violence) get started. (Hat tip to Bruno)
Designer Daddy – EPBOT profiles a guy who makes amazing costumes for his kids.
Okay, I was originally going to only comment on this sofa, but the more I look at this Etsy shop the more I’m convinced the whole thing is a colossal prank. So let’s start from the top.