Here’s a cute diversion for long car rides: The Monster Magnet Tin by Mudpuppy has more than forty monster illustrated parts to mix and match into your own hideous creations. It includes four reversible backgrounds with scenes like haunted houses and alien planets, and the tin is just the right size for stacking backgrounds and monsters.

It goes without saying that these would also be cute stuck to the refrigerator.

Mudpuppy doesn’t seem to have its own Website but there are several places you can buy the magnet set, including here and here. The tin runs about $14.

(via BoingBoing)

(via tinylittledivision)

Artist and culture jammer TradeMark G. often invokes the concept of Artistic License when asked, for instance, “Why on earth did you paint that toaster purple and install it on the ceiling?” or “Why do you drive a hearse that looks like a zebra?” He recently decided to back up his artistic cred with an actual license, so now he’s all official. He’s selling similar licenses so you, too, can back up your claim of being a misunderstood artist with legitimate-looking documentation.

If you live outside the U.S. and need a license for your own country–or if you just don’t want to spend the 20 bucks–I expect you could do something similar with photo editing software and a laminating machine (available at copy shops like Kinko’s).

Link (via BoingBoing)

Etsy member NeedleNoodles sells patterns for a wide variety of spooky amigurumi, including this skeletal bride and groom. Her malevolently cute little horde includes Lil Spookies, Undead, Knit Spookies, and Monsters.

If you’re not quite up to making your own, she also sells completed ones quite inexpensively. I think this teeny crocheted zombie is particularly fetching.

HETFET (Humans for the Ethical Treatment of Fairies, Elves, and Trolls) is an organization devoted to stamping out the exploitation of faeries and other fantastical creatures. The site includes a chilling exposé of the cruel conditions inside one of the “fairy factory farms” that produce the world’s supply of pixie dust.

Okay, if you want to get all technical about it, this is actually a viral ad site for the Hellboy sequel, but that makes it only marginally less amusing.

They even have a Cafepress store where you can get T-shirts and other “save the imaginary creatures” merchandise.

Please…give what you can, and make sure to look for the “Fairy Friendly®” symbol on the products you buy. Only you can prevent unnecessary cruelty to fantastical beings.

Comedy musician/Filker Tom Smith has taken the traditional song I Had a Cat… and done something dark and horrible with it.

His version is quite wonderful, with in-jokey references to horror and SF movies, and the music is infectious; Shadowboy has begged me to play this over and over and over and over….

You can download it in a low-res format for free, or high-res for $.99. Or you can just play it a zillion times online, which is where we’re at right now.

Link (Hat tip to SeaJade)

Skull-a-Day mentioned this fabric in passing, and I find myself immensely taken with it. The Echino collection is 44″ cotton in “home decor weight,” which could be anything from stiff calico to upholstery. I love the elegance of the images: The bats shown here remind me of old Japanese paintings, and the spiderwebs and insects on other fabrics are lovely rather than menacing.

This looks like an excellent way to bridge the gap between mainstream and goth; if you’d like a little darkness around the house but your partner (or your landlord, or your parents) isn’t so sure, decorating with fabric like this might be a workable compromise.

Bonus Link: Walter and Veronica did this nursery based on a swatch of fabric from the collection. I love the subtle little skulls.

Here’s a cheap and unique way to enliven that bare wall: Reproduction posters advertising absinthe.

The height of the absinthe boom in the late 19th century, coincided with the rise of the large lithographic advertising poster as a powerful commercial and artistic medium - pioneered by the work of Jules Chéret. Some of the greatest poster artists of the period - Cappiello, Privat-Livemont, Lefevre, Tamagno - created famous images to advertise the absinthe grand marques.

The Virtual Absinthe Museum has paired with Allposters.com to create vintage reproduction posters out of prints and advertisements from the museum’s collection. There’s some great Art Nouveau-type prints, along with darker and grittier works showing the downside of the Green Fairy. These would be a great way to add a dollop of bohemian decadence to a room.

Link (via Cynical-C)

If you didn’t have enough reason to visit Canada, the Diesel Playhouse in Toronto has extended its run of Evil Dead: The Musical. How could I have not heard of this before now?

Based on Sam Raimi’s 80s cult-classic horror films, EVIL DEAD: THE MUSICAL unearths the old familiar story: boy and friends take a weekend getaway at abandoned cabin, boy expects to get lucky, boy unleashes ancient evil spirit, friends turn into Candarian Demons, boy fights until dawn to survive. As musical mayhem descends upon this sleepover in the woods, “camp” takes on a whole new meaning with uproarious numbers like “All the Men in my Life Keep Getting Killed by Candarian Demons,” “Look Who’s Evil Now” and “Do the Necronomicon.”

The site mentions a “splatter zone,” so I guess there’s plenty of gratuitous gore.

I’m deeply tickled by the entire idea, but the best part of all is their street posters advertising the show.

I could weep from joy.*

Link (via BoingBoing)


*In case you’re scratching your head, the original.

This manufacturer “recycles” stainless-steel coffins collected from Southern California funeral homes. Their site says, “It is a health and safety law that funeral homes cannot resell used coffins to the general public,” but since they go on to imply that their recycling approach gives them a loophole I guess there’s no law against hosing ‘em off and turning them into furniture.

The six cast-iron legs are each embossed with the universal biohazard insignia, which I think is a nice touch.

At $4500 these may be a bit pricy, but you can’t beat them for style. They might be worth keeping in mind for your next interior decorating project.

Link (via The Presurfer)