Pink Cthulhu Pendant – The most delicate, upscale pink Cthulhu you’re likely to see all day. The artist also has an Etsy shop with lots of other wire-wrapped goodness. (Hat tip to Sally)
Make Your Own Girls Tights – Cute idea for making cheap tights for little girls out of womens’ knee socks.
Louis vs. Rick – “The story of a man who taught his cat to use instant messaging.” This is why I’m a dog person.
Crafter Diana Evans posted a super-easy method for making paper roses, which she then made into a heart-shaped wreath. Hers are the traditional red and pink, but there’s no reason they couldn’t be made out of black, purple, blood-red, or other gloomy colors of paper instead.
In addition to being a prettily gothic Valentine decoration, these would be a great embellishment for all kinds of things. Small ones could be glued around the edges of a picture frame. A cluster in different colors would be a pretty gift topper. They could be glued to barrettes, brooches, or shoe clips as interesting accessories. One or two tiny ones might also perk up a greeting card or paper book cover. And they’re so easy to make that they might even be useful as decorations at a wedding reception.
I also wonder what these would look like if they were made out of photographs instead of plain paper. Old photos are ubiquitous in thrift shops, and some nameless stranger’s random family pictures might find an interesting second life as a flower arrangement.
And, of course, you could also make these out of fabric scraps (stitch instead of glue) and use them to accessorize clothing, hats, tote bags, or similar items.
“Now, if you don’t want to make a scarf, you can just make a snake blanket….It’s okay to pull real hard, because it’s yarn, and yarn can’t feel pain….Sometimes you’ll see people knitting on the subway, or in coffee houses, and they’re just jerks, because they like to knit in front of people and brag that they can do it.”
(No prizes, but if you can answer them all without googling you get bragging rights.)
What is the name of the woman whom Edgar Allan Poe’s narrator “loved with a love that was more than a love?”
In this dark fantasy by Fritz Leiber, Norman Saylor strains the limits of conjugal love when he learns that his own wife is a practicing sorceress.
What band performed the gothic love song “Temple of Love?”
In the Victorian-era “language of flowers,” which flower signified Eternal Love?
A) Cypress
B) Hydrangea
C) Primrose
D) Lobelia
E) Marigold
What campy 1971 horror film starred Vincent Price as a disfigured man who uses methods based on the Ten Plagues of Egypt to exact revenge against the doctors who let his beloved wife die on the operating table?
What gothic novel involves the second Mrs. de Winter trying to fill the “perfect” first Mrs. de Winter’s shoes?
In Dracula, Lucy Westenra receives marriage proposals from three men, one of whom helps Jonathan Harker dispatch the Count at the end of the novel. Name him.
The spurned Lady Caroline Lamb characterized this Romantic poet as “mad, bad and dangerous to know.”
“Isabella, or the Pot of Basil” is a poem by John Keats about a woman who plants her deceased lover’s head in a pot of basil, which she tends obsessively. It was adapted from a story in what work?
A) The Canterbury Tales
B) One Thousand and One Nights
C) The Iliad
D) Piers Plowman
E) The Decameron
What 2004 Swedish film centers on the relationship between a 12-year-old boy named Oskar and a centuries-old vampire child named Eli?
My wedding ceremony began with the words, “Mawwiage. Mawwiage is what bwings us togethaw today,” so it’s safe to say that I have a soft spot in my heart for The Princess Bride. This year is–Egad!–the 25th anniversary of the movie’s release, and The Alamo Drafthouse theater chain in Austin is celebrating by wining and dining its patrons.
They partnered with the Helms Workshop design group to create artwork for two Bottle of Wits wines (Inconceivable Cab and As You Wish White), which will be available only in 2012. The wines will be debuting on Valentine’s Day, as part of the drafthouse’s specially-themed dinner.
Items on the menu include an MLT (thinly-sliced smoked mutton, roasted tomato, and arugula on rustic bread); the Screeching Eel Salad (crispy ale-glazed eel on local greens with a blood orange vinaigrette), Seared R.O.U.S. (NY strip steak, which is totally cheating*), and “miracle pill-sized” Twue Wuv Twuffles. You cannot fault their attention to detail.
For those of you in the Austin area, ta-da! Now you have Valentine’s Day dinner plans. For everybody else, there’s certainly no reason why you couldn’t put together a similar menu at home. The cute wine bottles won’t be available, but if you’re feeling particularly ambitious you could mock up something similar in your favorite graphics program and paste it over the label on the wine of your choice.
Sit down with a few friends, pop in the movie, and enjoy an evening of fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, and miracles. Nothing says “party” like shrieking eels.
Needle Felt a Voodoo Doll Pincushion – Tutorial for making a cute little voodoo doll. If you’ve been looking for an introductory project to try needle felting, this looks like a fun one.
Years – Artist Bartholomäus Traubeck figured out a way to play the rings of a tree like a record. The results are rather creepy. (I still say I’d be more impressed if the thing had played “Norwegian Wood.”) (Hat tip to xJane)
Flight 404 – Creepy and surreal Flash…thing…which purports to be the investigation of a mysterious plane crash.
Grenade Oil Lamps – Real army surplus grenades in three styles (fragmentation, flash, or high impact) repurposed into unusual oil lamps.
I am rarely moved by Shoe Lust, but I gotta admit that these boots are pretty mind-blowing. They’re a one-off design, “hand painted and embossed leather boots with forged steel curly heel.”
The creator is Pendragon Shoes, an Australian duo who hand-make amazing shoes and accessories. They do quite a lot of work for theatre and film, and also retail some “off the shelf” designs which are a bit simpler and cheaper. They also do one-offs and commissions, and I have no idea how much those cost but they’re probably worth it. You can see a few of their unique designs here, and there’s a link to more on their site.
If you’re looking for the ultimate in shoes for a wedding or other important costume, these folks might be just what you need.
House on the Hill sells molds for springerle and speculaas cookies, most of them copied from centuries-old historic molds. Bakerella had the bright idea of using them to mold fondant into fantastically-detailed toppers for cookies and cupcakes.
Her examples are a soft pink, but you can tint fondant (either purchased or homemade) any color you like, and some of these mold designs are just begging to be turned into memento mori-style cameos or other spooky things. Their collection of angels, for example, include many designs that would look perfect as gravestones.
Sticking a piece of molded fondant to the top of a cookie or cupcake is much less labor-intensive than trying detailed decorating with frosting, and the three-dimensional results are amazing. A tray full of these would be a fantastic addition to a party, and the smaller designs would look great cut out individually and placed on the sides of a cake as well. (If you want to use the molds for their traditional purpose, the site has plenty of recipes.)
I expect you could also use the molds to shape polymer clay for decorative accents, although they’d probably not be fit to use for food again afterwards. The clay designs could be gently molded to the contours of, say, a vase, allowed to fully dry, and then glued in place. Very small designs might make interesting pendants or earrings as well.
I’ll be adding this to the ever-growing list of Things I Wish Had Been Around When I Was a Kid. Trackers is Portland-based “outdoor education” organization that teaches skills like wilderness survival and environmental education. They offer classes for both adults and kids, and one of the latter is the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense Training Camp, a.k.a. “Hellboy Camp.” Kids aged 9-17 learn survival skills, investigation and forensics, and how to use “gadgets of the occult” such as EMF detectors.
Find out if you have what it takes to join an elite team of paranormal investigators combating the forces of darkness from all across the globe. We immerse you in tactical training of all forms, including survival skills in any environment (both earthly and non), martial arts and self-defense specific to praeternatural entities, hand to hand weaponry (we train foam swords, bows and more) and forensic investigation. All these key skills that every agent must have, plus you are steeped in the history of our Bureau and legacy of paranormal research.
Does that sound awesome, or does that sound like the awesomest thing ever?
Fortunately, they also offer some other cool-sounding programs with both kid and adult versions, including Zombie Survival Training and a very Lord of the Rings-esque Ranger wilderness training course.
Mad props to their marketing department; these sound like loads of fun.
Oooh…pretty.
My wedding ceremony began with the words, “Mawwiage. Mawwiage is what bwings us togethaw today,” so it’s safe to say that I have a soft spot in my heart for The Princess Bride. This year is–Egad!–the 25th anniversary of the movie’s release, and The Alamo Drafthouse theater chain in Austin is celebrating by wining and dining its patrons.
I am rarely moved by Shoe Lust, but I gotta admit that 
Oooh, I love this idea.
I’ll be adding this to the ever-growing list of Things I Wish Had Been Around When I Was a Kid.