Timorous Beasties offers a variety of surreal wallpaper, fabric, and accessories with patterns both subtle and provocative. Here’s a quote from their “About” page:

By depicting uncompromisingly contemporary images on traditional textiles and wallpapers, Timorous Beasties has defined an iconoclastic style of design once described as “William Morris on acid.” Typical is the Glasgow Toile. At first glance it looks like one of the magnificent vistas portrayed on early 1800s Toile de Jouy wallpaper, but closer inspection reveals a nightmarish vision of contemporary Glasgow where crack addicts, prostitutes and the homeless are depicted against a forbidding backdrop of dilapidated tower blocks and scavenging seagulls.

The firm is located in the U.K., but they also have a supplier in New York: Holland and Sherry

(via Halloween Hotlist)

T-shirt demigods Threadless and graphic designers Blik (whose slogan, “Wall graphics for the commitment phobic,” I quite like), have entered into a marvy little partnering gig. They’re synergistically delicious!

Link (via Neatorama)

Tonky Designs sells huge, stylized vinyl stickers in a variety of colors and shapes–everything from giant squid to crosscut saws.

Link (via CribCandy)

Here’s another easy project, requiring little more than a cheap picture frame and some paint. It doesn’t even require much manual dexterity, which is good, because I don’t have much.

Materials:

• A wooden picture frame. It really should be wood, because you’re going to inflict mayhem upon it with nails and/or screws. Other materials will split or break or, for all I know, explode. Wood, please.


• Some matte black spray paint, otherwise known as the Duct Tape of the Goths.


• Various sizes of nails, wood screws, or other fastening devices that look sort of spiky and Torquemada-inspiring. Those little tiny C clamps might be nice.


• Acrylic paint in a contrasting color. Use blood-red to suggest, duh, blood, or maybe choose a nice bile yellow or pea-soup green.


• Paint sealant (optional).

Technique:

1. Decide whether you want the nails/screws/implements of destruction to remain their natural metal color or if you want them to be black too. If the former, paint the frame black now and skip Step 3.


2. Pound nails and screw um, screws haphazardly into the frame, leaving them sticking out partway. Attach whatever other hardware suits your fancy.


3. If everything’s supposed to be black, now’s the time to spray everything. Let dry thoroughly.


4. Spatter on the acrylic paint. An easy way to do this is to dip a brush in the paint and then flick it over the frame. Let dry.


5. If desired, spray with a sealant. Let dry.

Insert your favorite photo of Pinhead (or, y’know, any other photo) and display with pride.

ThinkGeek, whom I love to the point of inappropriateness anyway, has fulfilled a long-standing dream of mine: To have a doorbell that screams like the one in Murder By Death. Connect the USB Doorbell to your computer and upload up to 30 seconds of your favorite sound effect, song, or movie clip. Change it as often as you like. (Y’know, a clip of Lurch saying, “You rang?” would be entertaining, too.)

Link

Here’s another lovely decorative item that should be fairly easy to replicate by the canny goth. At $1500, the Mark Beam Spine Lamp is apparently targeted at rich chiropractors. I’m assuming that it must actually be cast metal, but an interesting knockoff might be made using bones from our friends at Anatomical.

Get yourself a spine and pelvis from one of their smaller models, add a lamp kit (available from hardware stores and some craft stores),* and either spray-paint it with something that sticks to plastic or leave it in its natural bony state. Fun and relatively uncomplicated.


*Remember children: Electricity goes Zzzzap! Play carefully.

This e-Bay store sells “lowbrow Victoriana,” curiosities, and lot of interesting posters featuring skeletons, ghosts, and whatnot. There’s nothing like posters to cover up bare walls for cheap.

Link

Ever walk down the street on trash pickup day and find someone throwing away an old chest of drawers? Have a flea-market desk that’s outlived its usefulness? Save the drawers!

1. Take two or three mismatched drawers, remove the hardware, and paint the outside black.
2. The inside surface will be your display area. You can paint it a contrasting color of paint (perhaps a deep red, or even an antique bronze), or use spray glue to line it with an interesting fabric (such as brocade) or decorative paper (wrapping paper, wallpaper, scrapbooking paper).
3. Hang them on the wall, either with a brute-force method such as nails or screws, or (if your landlord is twitchy) with some sort of sticky mounting strips like 3M’s Command line.

Use them to display your special treasures, from priceless netsuke to your collection of action figures. If you’re feeling particularly frisky, you can have glass or Plexiglas cut to fit the opening, making them true little cases.

I recently finished gothing up a picture frame using some cheap novelties, hot glue, and paint, and am quite delighted with the results. It’s much easier and faster than you’d expect, and the finished product is spectacular. I’ve posted a how-to guide for those of you who might be feeling crafty. (For those of you who aren’t, I’m taking special orders for custom frames. E-mail me for details.)