Here’s a neat site I recently stumbled across. Urban Threads peddles edgy designs for machine- and hand embroidery, and also offers their designs as high-resolution clip art.

Their site features a project gallery and blog and, best of all, they frequently offer free designs for download. For January they celebrated Edgar Allan Poe’s birthday with an adorable “Nevermore” design (now back in their shop, but you can also see a finished version at craftershock), and their current free logo patterns could easily be repurposed as a personalized skull-and-needle-crossbones design.

Their downloadable patterns are very cheap–about $3 each–and wonderfully whimsical. Many are cute without being saccharine (I’ve already bought their Abducted pattern to stitch on a shirt for Shadowboy), and there are several design “collections” like tattoos and robots that would look great on a set of tea towels or throw pillows.

Here’s another easy skin-care product that you can whip up as a gift or just to pamper yourself. All of these ingredients are readily available from soap supply retailers or from many health-food stores.

This makes a nice moisturizing cream for all skin types.

Ingredients
2 tsp beeswax
2 tsp lanolin
2 Tbsp almond oil
1 tsp wheat germ oil
1/4 tsp borax
1/3 C rosewater
12 drops rose or rose geranium essential oil
A few drops of red food coloring (optional)

Instructions
Melt the beeswax and lanolin together over a double boiler, stirring constantly.

Mix the oils together and warm gently (either over another double boiler or just over a pan of hot water). Gradually beat into the waxes. Warm the rosewater slightly, dissolve the borax in it, and slowly add to the oil and wax mixture, beating constantly until cool. Stir in the essential oil and food coloring as the mixture begins to thicken.

Spoon into jars and label.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is an expansion of the Jane Austen classic with “all-new scenes of bone crunching zombie action.”

As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton–and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she’s soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers–and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield as Elizabeth wages war against hordes of flesh-eating undead. Complete with 20 illustrations in the style of C. E. Brock (the original illustrator of Pride and Prejudice), this insanely funny expanded edition will introduce Jane Austen’s classic novel to new legions of fans.

I can envision a whole series of “enhanced” classics. Jane Eyre would find vampires in the attic. Moby Dick would be a minion of Cthulhu. Oliver Twist could moonlight as an axe murderer. There’d be a lot more book reports written, I can tell you that much.

Link (via Neatorama)

Disney’s Haunted Mansion attraction is about to turn 40, and they’re planning all kinds of commemorative merchandise to celebrate. My favorite are these awesome shoes, featuring the spooky eyeball wallpaper pattern from the entrance hallway.

You can view artist’s concepts of all the planned merchandise here. They’re expecting high demand for some of these limited-edition items, so they’ll be using a “Random Selection Process” computer program to choose who gets to purchase the merchandise.

Incidentally, if you’re in the Anaheim area, there’s an after-hours special event planned for the ride’s anniversary. It looks like the tickets are mostly sold out already, but I’d be surprised if they weren’t available on eBay.

Despite their annoying interstitial ads, I do like Better Homes and Gardens Magazine’s decorating slideshows. They’ve posted a bunch of cute ideas for a Halloween wedding reception, many of which would also be appropriate for an upscale Halloween party.

Several of the ideas include project instructions like this easy Guest Book and Pen Holder.

Be sure to check out their other Halloween slideshows for additional ideas.

Bonus Link: Check out these cute ideas from Christine’s Couture

Every so often I’ll run into an item that’s just begging for a DIY riff. This clever rug is one of them.

Artistic “funhouse” Longoland lists the materials for this Monster Skin Rug as Brushed Woven Cashmere & Wool and Polymer Clay. The cashmere/wool appears to be felted, and their related Monster Skin Chair page even has a few photos demonstrating how the fabric is marked and cut. The teeth are, presumably, where the polymer clay comes in.

I’m not sure how I feel about the felty-scaly look of the body, but I completely love the concept. You could go nuts with faux fur, leather, or alligator skin (or a combination!), plastic or polymer clay fangs and claws, plastic eyes (the kind used for dolls or stuffed animals), and create your very own trophy cryptozoological specimen. If you need help getting started, check out this eHow page on making a fake bear rug out of an old plush toy and faux fur.

A Chupacabra- or Yeti-skin rug would be an amusing addition to any room. Pair it with some mounted Mothman wings and get ready to spin tales of your latest expedition to hunt mythical creatures.

(via We Covet)

The Grandma’s Graphics site has a nice collection of public domain artwork from vintage children’s books.

From Harry Clarke to 1890’s storybooks, if you’re looking for unique images or clipart for use on your web pages or in other design or craft projects you’ve come to the right place. There’s a treasury here at Grandma’s Graphics that you probably won’t find anywhere else online. Some of these graphics are quite large and take time to load, but be patient, they’re worth the wait.

The free images are 72 dpi (Web resolution), but for a small fee they also offer higher resolution scans. These would be a great resource for design projects. In particular, check out the Avatars page, which features all kinds of creepy visages from works by Poe and Goethe.

Link (via BoingBoing)

PSDTUTS–an awesome resource for Photoshop tutorials and a good place to make those of us who think we know a thing or two about Photoshop consider resigning in shame–has a roundup of “digital paintings,” heavy on the fantasy/horror/science fiction. Their digital nature make them seem hyper-realistic, and they’re eye-poppingly lovely.

Each entry also links to the artist’s Website or gallery, so there’s plenty more where these came from. (Some are on the NSFW side, so practice safe surfing.)

Link (via Big Dumb Object)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, phonin’ it in with another link dump. Sue me.

Shrunken Head Necklace – Cute little pendant made of polymer clay and wool.

Dragon Cake – Every time I think I have reasonably good cake-decorating skills, I run into something like this.

People Eat the Weirdest Things – Roundup, with photos, of some odd cuisine. (Although inexplicably they overlooked balut.)

Full Moon Industries – Image-heavy site devoted to spooky things. Good source of inspiration.

Knitting for Psychos – Flickr set (no instructions) of all kinds of cutely-dismembered creatures.

Elysian Fields – Neat wallpaper with a subtle bat motif. Expensive, but very pretty.

Electric Bath Duckie – “One Use Only.”

Eyeball Garnish – Instructions for making the most disgustingly realistic drink garnish you’re ever going to see. You will wince to look at it.

Barbie Wreath – Unusual bondage-esque decoration made of wire-wrapped Barbie dolls.

Disney Celebrates You – This isn’t exactly spooky, but it amuses me because of my Disney roots and it’s actually quite well done. Enter a person’s name and the site will generate a customized “news video” about how the Disneyland parks are going to honor that person.

Spiderweb Watch – Very pretty wristwatch with a spiderweb case.

Nightmare Playgrounds: Part 1 and Part 2 – Playground sculptures that will give small children the fantods. I especially like the shot of the little girl sitting on Cthulhu’s lap.

Making Vinegar – with…Science!

Zombie Cross-stitch – “Zombies only want you for your brains.”

Rattlesnake Glass Holder – Realistic rattlesnake that coils around a standard pint glass.

The Recently Deflowered Girl – Odd little humorous “etiquette” book, offering “The Right Thing To Say On Every Dubious Occasion.” Illustrated by Edward Gorey. (Safe for Work.)

Fire Meets Desire – I have a couple of comments about this: My non-U.S. readers probably have no knowledge of Burger King’s mascot (for which you surely have fewer nightmares), but he’s a guy in a creepy-looking plastic mask. Last month, Burger King ostensibly launched a new men’s fragrance which featured “a hint of flame-broiled meat.” It was taken at face value all over the news, although the whole thing screams “viral marketing campaign” to me. (The single place where you can buy the fragrance is perpetually out of stock.) However–however!–their promotional site for the cologne is pretty damn funny. Keep clicking, and you’ll see what I mean.

I recently ran across this neat pattern for an unusual papercraft box, and it reminded me about the Great Chocolate Frog Project.

Several years ago, when Shadaughter was very much a fan of the Harry Potter series, we decided to give our annual Halloween party a Harry Potter theme. (We weren’t anywhere near as gung-ho as Britta is, but we lived up to my family’s motto* anyway.) One of our party favors was chocolate frogs.

We used a frog candy mold to cast the frogs, and each was presented with a special “trading card.” F’rinstance:

Famous Wizards
Merlin

Merlin tutored the young King Arthur and helped chart the course of British history. His use of the Soopergloo charm enabled only Arthur to pull a sword from a stone, thus winning him the throne. After Arthur was defeated by Mordred, Merlin went into show business. He is best known for his smash-hit musicals “No, No, Nimue” and “A Hard Day’s Knight.”

After the first movie came out a few members of my Halloween listserv decided to replicate the box, and I offered my cards as part of the package. So, if you’d like to try your hand at your own chocolate frogs (they really do make nice party favors), check out Minions Web for complete instructions.

*If a Thing is Worth Doing, it is Worth Overdoing.