DIY Fox Tail – Tutorial for making a cosplay fox tail out of yarn.
I Heart Guts – This site specializes in organ-related merchandise (if you’ve ever wanted a plush spleen, now’s your chance), and they’ve just come out with a new line of merit badge-style patches which celebrate lady bits. I like “Vadge of Honor,” personally. (Hat tip to Pixel Pixie)
Coffin Beach Towel – Black beach towel shaped like a toe-pincher coffin. You could probably DIY one of your own with an oversize towel and a pair of scissors.
To the Surface – Photo series of period dresses posed as ghostly figures.
Amigurumi Monsters – A whole bunch of crocheted baby monsters. I particularly like how so many different “personalities” can be created by using the same base body plan and just changing the details.
Fairy Berries – LED lights that fade in and out like fireflies. Pretty landscaping detail for parties.
Worst (Best) Metal Album Covers – A collection of very…special…album covers. (Bonus: Check out Fantomas’ cover of “Charade” in the comments.)
Is the Person Naming These Colors of Yarn Okay? – I agree that “Rotten pistachio cream macaron” and “Too much Aperol Spritz” are fairly unique color descriptions, but there’s also “Poisoned blood,” “Rain in a graveyard,” and “Bats in a dark mood,” which I’d buy just for the names alone.
This to That – Choose the two things you’re trying to glue together, and the site tells you which glue will work best. Handy for crafters.
You guys all ran out after Halloween and bought fake pumpkins on clearance, right? (Right?!?) Well, here’s what to do with ’em.
The elsie marley blog has this super-simple idea for poking holes in foam pumpkins with a skewer and then cross-stitching through the holes. This is a wonderfully rustic look, and with the right colors and design they’d be lovely decor year-round.
Obviously, there are loads of different ways to riff on the basic idea. Spray-paint the pumpkins in a variety of colors, or use “special effects” paint kits to make them look like marble or wood grain. Do a search on “free halloween cross stitch patterns” to find lots of ideas for the stitching (you’ll want to make sure they’re fairly simple designs). Do complementary designs on opposite sides, or stitch a different letter on several pumpkins to spell out a short message.
This idea is easy enough that even kids should be able to give it a try (although smaller fry might need help poking the holes), and fixing any mistakes is as easy as pulling out the yarn.
If you weren’t so lucky as to score any clearance-sale pumpkins last Halloween, mark your calendar now to pick up a couple this year.
Posted in Doom It Yourself|Comments Off on Cross-Stitched Pumpkins
EPBOT recently shared a roundup of fan art which included this gorgeous chair makeover (click to embiggen). Reader Elizabeth C. started with an unfinished chair found at a thrift store, hand-painted the patchwork seat and detailing, and finished it off with a bow made from stiff felt.
The result is really striking, and is also one of those marvelous projects that falls within the skillset of us mere mortals. None of the patchwork patterns are terribly intricate, and the variations in the design actually add to its charm. If you wanted something a little sturdier than felt to use for the bat, thin plywood should work fine and is easy to cut.
If you’re feeling particularly ambitious, you could make over a whole dinette set this way. A set of chairs in the patchwork “Sally” pattern matched with a table featuring a border of li’l Jack Skellington faces around the edges would look great and should be manageable over the course of a few weekends.
Posted in Bad Things|Comments Off on Nightmare Before Christmas Chair
This band was formed in the early 80s by identical twins Jay and Michael Aston.
A) Alien Sex Fiend
B) Nosferatu
C) Rosetta Stone
D) Fields of the Nephilim
E) Gene Loves Jezebel
What’s the name of the Roman god of War?
It’s a common misconception that Tim Burton directed A Nightmare Before Christmas. Who actually directed the film?
A) Ray Harryhausen
B) Henry Selick
C) Nick Park
D) George Pal
E) Phil Tippett
Absinthe is traditionally flavored with what bitter herb?
The first motion-picture adaptation of Frankenstein wasn’t the 1931 version starring Boris Karloff. Instead, it was a “kinetogram” produced in 1910 by this inventor.
A) Nikola Tesla
B) Alexander Graham Bell
C) Guglielmo Marconi
D) George Eastman
E) Thomas Edison
In this 1972 fantasy novel, a group of trick-or-treating boys is helped by a mysterious character named Carapace Clavicle Moundshroud.
The most powerful alien/demon in H.P. Lovecraft’s mythos is:
A) Nyarlathotep
B) Azathoth
C) Shub-Niggurath
D) Yog-Sothoth
E) Cthulhu
Daveigh Chase, who provided the voice for Lilo Pelekai in Disney’s Lilo and Stitch, also played the “monster” in what 2002 horror movie?
Type O Negative’s Peter Steele wrote “I Like Goils” to make light of the attention he was receiving from gay men after his photoshoot appeared in this magazine.
A) Penthouse
B) Celebrity Skin
C) Playgirl
D) Hustler
E) Nuts
What movie has Beetlejuice seen 167 times (“and it keeps getting funnier every single time I see it!”)?
Elf Spotting Certificate – A recent John Oliver segment mentioned the Icelandic Elf School, where you can earn an honest-to-goodness certificate in Elf Spotting. Just in case you don’t want to go to Iceland and spend thousands of dollars, “Last Week Tonight” has kindly created a free downloadable certificate which is every bit as effective.
Addams Family Baby Crib – The prop crib used for “Pubert” in Addams Family Values is up for auction right now. There are a couple of good photos that would be useful for reference in DIYing your own.
Science Chamber of Horrors – “Presenting the freakiest and most terrifying aspects of science, scientists, and nature.” (via pdq)
Black Bath Bombs – The copy is a little breathless, but these gothy bath bombs are pretty neat.
Matt Mets used paper cutouts on both the inside and outside of a lampshade to create a cute “monster after dark” effect.
This kind of fun with silhouettes is ripe for all kinds of customization: A crescent moon with bats that appear at night, a castle haunted by a nocturnal ghost, and lots of other now-you-see-them-now-you-don’t options. A reverse effect might also be possible, where an innocuous-looking doorway could have spooky eyes glowing from within. (The only caveat might be that the cutouts for the eyes may still be visible when the light is off.)
You could do something a little more permanent using stickers or even paint, but I kind of like the idea of temporary paper cutouts that can be changed as the whim suits you.
There are things in the wilds of the intarwebs that make you quizzically cock your head to one side like a dog hearing a high-pitched whistle, and this is one of them.
The Zombible (“Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Zombies”) dares to ask the question, “How might the Gospels have been different if Jesus had come to Earth not to save mankind from sin, but from zombies?” And then it rewrites the contents of the four gospels by way of an answer.
It’s subtle; the prose uses the King James style of writing, and if you just skim it you might not notice anything amiss. But if you read a bit more closely, you notice things like this part of the Parable of the Prodigal Son:
7 And when he came to himself, he thought, How many hired servants has my father spare, and I moan with hunger! 8 I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Brains, 9 and call upon his hired servants.
10 And he arose, and shambled to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell, and ran, and kissed him.
11 And the son said unto him, Brains.
The authors state that this is their first work, so they may intend to rewrite the entire New Testament to reflect Jesus’ new mission. It’d be amusing to quote a verse here and there, insisting that they’re legitimate.
People, I love Halloween with an unrestrained passion. My love for Halloween is Not Normal. Nobody in my family knows where this came from. We are the kind of family that carves a pumpkin, MAYBE two, and that is all. We do not fuck about with spiderwebs and mood lighting. We open the door, dole out a Three Musketeers or a Snickers, and that is the end of the matter.
But something in my genetic makeup was dissatisfied with that arrangement, and somehow, y’all, I have become…I have become That Person who feels the need to decorate the everloving HELL out of her house. I am That Person who BUYS those full-sized skeletons, hanging witches, and packages of fake spiderwebs. I am That Person, and That Person is me, and together, we are a nutbag.
She posted some photos of a previous year’s decorating efforts to Flickr, and oh I am passionately in love with this side table. It is, obviously, meant to be just a Halloween decoration and I’m sure that something a little less unusual occupies its depths during the rest of the year, but holy crap I want this table year-round. I think it’s because the bones look real instead of fakey-plastic, and they’re so artfully arranged and look so elegant on top of the dirt. The dirt-and-bone color scheme matches the shabby-chic distressed paint on the table nicely, too.
The bones have enough of an archaeological-dig feel about them that they’re interesting rather than disturbing; a coffee- or end table decorated like this would be an amazing accent piece in an otherwise mainstream room. Lovely!
You guys all ran out after Halloween and bought fake pumpkins on clearance, right? (Right?!?) Well, here’s what to do with ’em.
There are things in the wilds of the intarwebs that make you quizzically cock your head to one side like a dog hearing a high-pitched whistle, and this is one of them.
