Goth outfitter Venom & Bootle is offering a Mohawk toupee for those whose own hair can’t quite manage this kind of Foof Factor. Their “secret formula” for attaching the piece uses “techniques from special FX film make up to bond to your head.”

Huh.

Anyway, it’s £45 (about $90) for a toupee that they say will last about 15 uses, with the caveat that setting it on fire or throwing up on it will shorten its lifespan a bit. Come to think of it, either of those would shorten my lifespan a bit.

Link (via BoingBoing)

I’ve mentioned the Skull a Day site previously, but just in case you haven’t been checking the site regularly, let me call your attention to the “Skullphabet” font available for free download.

As with many novelty fonts, it’s too hard to decipher for it to really be effective in long passages of text. But it’d be perfect as a page header or a short title.

Link

If you’re looking for some atmospheric music to play by candlelight, here are a couple of artists you might check out.

Nox Arcana’s albums include titles such as “Darklore Manor,” “Carnival of Lost Souls,” and “Blood of Angels.” Their latest, “Shadow of the Raven,” is a Poe-inspired album:

Delve into the haunted realms of Edgar Allan Poe, as Nox Arcana enriches the classic tales of the literary master of the macabre with a lush musical tapestry of Victorian elegance and Gothic nightmares. This dark soundscape of ghostly melodies, mournful dirges, eerie sound effects and ominous orchestrations is accompanied by Joseph Vargo’s lavish artwork depicting Poe’s classic horror tales, and even offers fans a hidden “gold bug” riddle.

(Joseph Vargo also did the artwork for The Gothic Tarot, which is very pretty.)

Midnight Syndicate advertises themselves with the slogan, “Gothic Nightmare Soundtracks,” but I think that sells them rather short. (Their bio mentions their quest to create “soundtracks for the imagination,” which is closer to the mark.) They’re a favorite with haunters trying to enliven–or, um, endeaden, I guess–their attractions, but I like them as background music. The all-instrumental albums are meant to tell a story, so (for example) their “Gates of Delirium” album begins with “Arrival,” moves through tracks such as “Cage of Solitude” and “Non Compos Mentis,” and winds up with “Ebony Shroud” and “Sleep Tight.” Lovely!

If you like Dead Can Dance, you ought to like these two. Check ’em out!

The AIGA Journal of Design has an interesting article entitled Forever Skull, a look at the skull as a design icon.

As an icon, it will never die, not as long as we are flesh and bone. We might one day be cyborgs, but the skull as symbol will morph into something like a drive-in-theater speaker, a metallic encasement with antenna and a mesh mouth. From primate to hominid to homo sapiens to… robo skull. The skull will outlive us.

I sort of have to agree. The skull is one of the few constants across all civilizations and time periods. It’s interesting to see the various forms that it takes in art and iconography.

(via Morbid Anatomy)

The Webcomic xkcd is a thoughtful, surprisingly lyrical, musing on various aspects of Deep Geekery. Occasionally it strays into gothy territory, as in this one.

Added bonus extra feature: Each comic has an Easter eggy-sort of thing in the form of the ALT tag on the image file. Mousing over the cartoon should make the tag appear in most browsers.

It’s fun! Go read it!

Curses! Where were these guys when I lived in California? Located in Placerville, they’ve got a gorgeous collection of dark decorative elements and curiosities, from mortuary photos to garden statuary. Some of their smaller items are available for sale online, but all of the big stuff is reserved for locals. They even offer interior decorating services.

I really love the brooding, haunted atmosphere their pieces suggest. Dig around their site for all sorts of decorating inspiration.

Link (via Witches Caldron [sic])

Corinne Leigh on Threadbanger has posted a wonderful set of instructions for making your own costume fairy wings out of coat hangers and pantyhose. Purchased wings (such as those found at RenFaire) can be expensive and/or of poor quality. These easy instructions give you the opportunity to design your wings in any shape you like (bat wings, f’rinstance), and go nuts with the colors and embellishments.

Link

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.)