Friday, November 30, 2012

Twisted Treasuries #15: The Collection Edition




The Collection embarks upon the world today via theatres. I absolutely adored The Collector, which came out of nowhere a few years back to delight me on DVD. Another movie I actually thought about going to the movie theatre to see... but then I remember all the little gross things I learned about movie theatres while working in one in high school and the old lady germaphobe in me attacks and tells me to save my health and my money, stay home and watch the original 5000 more times till its sequel hits a rentable format.

 
I still may try to see it. Even if they ARE feeding it to the world via its relations to the one trick magical horror pony SAW (II-VI to be critically exact on that statement... I loved the original. Sequels? Not so much) and the trainwreck that was Insidious.

Anywho, in honor of  The Collection's release, this week TT indulges the knick-knack obsessionals that make up my own collections-- as bloodied and battered as any of the collectors victims...



This is probably a huge duh, but I love skulls. Of all sorts. Living in a heavily wooded wing of suburbia one's privvy to finding all sorts of woodland leftovers in their backyard-- empty sun bleached turtle shells, deer skulls, an entire intact skeleton of a mole. All nice editions to the family curio. Having said all that, it's pretty rare that I buy the real deal. Good thing this little guy is a replica... I always wanted a kitten. I'd love to find this one in my stocking this Christmas.



I'm pretty sure we've covered my affinity for weird dolls. Yes? Pigs too? Check. Well, then this little guy should be no surprise.



I went through a lawn gnome and pink flamingo phase a couple of years ago. Gnomes are all the right kind of creepy, but mostly around my neck of the woods people just think of them as lawn junk instead of lurking little pointy-hatted lumps of doom. Chris and Janes zombie lawn gnomes would change all of that. And, bonus! Maybe even get them to quit griping about our lawn...



Actually, forget the lawn. I need this for my car. Like pronto. She collects trinkets too.



A little Junker Jane soothes the soul, lemme tell you. I love her rag dolls. This Monster Frankenstein would look so at home with Monster Emma, Petal and Witch Malyss. If only he wasn't on reserve!!
by JunkerJane (duh)
 
 
 
This would make a great background piece for all my tooth fetish paraphenalia.


Jewelry counts as a collection right? Silver and skulls are what you'll find at the heart of mine. For that reason I love Jewels Vine's shop. I've had my eye on this skull charm for awhile now. But any piece would do! Especially the various skeleton keys charms.


OHMYGOSH I love the oddity of gas masks. They're creepy, industrial and more varieties exist that you would think. I would love to add this to my modest little vintage collection. If you want odd and old, oddacious is etsy gold!


When I was a kid, we'd spend spring break in the Shenandoah Valley. There was a little store called Tuttle and Spice that had a wax museum and curiousity corner and in one of the rooms was a taxidermied squirrel on a branch with a cigarette hanging out of it's mouth and a bottle of booze cradled in its paw. That squirrel was the main highlight of the trip for years and years for me. As a result, I have a love/hate/disgust relationship with taxidermy. I don't actually collect it because it real life it freaks me out to have, what used to be a living animal, stuffed and staring at you glassy-eyed from a bookshelf. I think it's borderline disrespectful to the animal too, especially a little piece like this, BUT at the same time that twisted freak of a little Norma Bates girl in me (with the West Virginia outdoorsman genes I got from my Dad helping her along) can't get enough of it, so we add it to that little secret stash of a collection in my imagination, that little girl and I...


I could totally see myself starting a faux taxidermy collection. These miniature mounts aren't technically the fuzzy kind of taxidermy I mean, but they'd be great first additions. In all truth I could make a collection from any of The Rogue and the Wolf goodies or art from its sister store HidenSeek.
 

 


Of course if you don't have a collection, but you have the means and motivation to acquire one, you could always go for an instant curio collection, like this one from aldetha. I know I wouldn't mind it (parrot excluded), or any of the oddities stuffed into this shop, myself. From curios to prosthetics, antique coffin plates and taxidermied owls, this is quite the impressive etsy vintage and antique shop! 
via aldetha


So what kind of curios get your cabinets amped up collection wise?


Don't forget to at least check out The Collector on DVD (blu-ray, laser disc...whatever)-- I believe it's also available in various parts on youTube at the moment. And if you see The Collection, lemme know what you thought!
Let's hope it doesn't suck...

The Collector TRAILER
The Collection TRAILER


By the way, did you know if you click the pictures they take you to the etsy listing? Well. They totally do.

Thursday, November 29, 2012

Let's Talk American Horror Story

No, I'm NOT referring to last weeks Thanksgiving fiasco with the fam and your painfully loud obnoxious Uncle Mitch who, upon hearing about your penchant for horror movies and contrasting affliction to consuming dead flesh, reenacted a scene from Texas Chainsaw Massacre with bits of turkey skin to push your buttons. If that was your initial thought in reading the headline, however, don't worry, it's a perfectly natural reaction. Especially this time of year.
As for your uncle Mitch, well.... send him to my house for Christmas. He'll be a welcome breath of fresh crazy, believe me.

No, I'm talking, of course, about the odd-daciously salacious catechism that is F/X's American Horror Story: Asylum. You know, the show I gushed about on its season 2 premiere back in October? Man, am I kicking myself for that one. I totally jinxed it...
Psychopaths, possessions and Zachary Quinto's school of Ed Gein. OH. MY. And that's only the people running the asylum! There are about 20 other crisscrossing overstimulatory cray cray back stories and plot line in this epic tableau of WTF to keep you reeling till the syphilitic cannibal mutations come home.

The season started off well enough. Good strong horror hocks from which to build greatness, plus they ripped off the arms of that Maroon 5 guy, which I've been waiting for someone to do for years. But then the pinhead disappeared after the big storm that hit Briarcliff (eerily the same week Sandy hit the East Coast in real life-- anybody notice that?) and shit hit the fan. The road split off into a thousand different splintered fractions of every pinch of the genre you could think of and the show ran off with any semblance of sanity and genius the writers may have had lingering from the first season. From French girls with axes to alien abductions and Ann Franks lobotomy,  after this season there won't be any randomly taboo ideas left to scrape off the bottom of the F/X barrel. I really have NO idea why I'm still watching-- a feeling quite familiar after the ridiculousness that was Lost round about the second to last season-- other than the fact that I'm kind of convinced the season finale will be heads and televisions across America spontaneously exploding after the flashing Sister Mary What-the-Frak's head starts flashing on the screen, the ghost of Connel Cochran laughing softly in the night....

Wait. Wrong movie.

Or is it?  HA! Think about that.


To sum up my feelings, in one word, I leave you with this:




Have you been watching? What do you think?

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Mugged


My Halloween mug collection is still MIA, but Goodwill offered up this little gem to me last week. Slowly, but surely we're repairing the gaping Halloween mug shaped hole in my cupboards...

Friday, November 23, 2012

Twisted Treasuries #14 : The Black Friday Crazies



Behold! The Season of Wants has decended upon us. As I'm going to be working the better part of Black Friday wading through the retail bulk of it on the front lines, marveling at how far some manage to stretch their credit, I figured why not feast of a huge helping of Black Friday dreamburgers and endulge the craziest of my own wants? They say Christmas time is for big wishes and big miracles... so besides world peace and a corporate conglomerate to swoop in and save the Twinkies I'll gladly accept the following this Christmas:

 
A handmade Bates mansion miniature scale replica? You bet! And you better believe I'd shell out the bucks for Norman and "mother" figures to go with it. Course, right now all I could afford are mother and Norman, but since this is a big dreamer list, the whole lot of Haunted Construction Co. models will do for me, thanks.


I have an odd relationship with spiders. Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Art pretty much did me in trauma-wise when I was little and I'm pretty sure half the population of them lurking in the house has plots to kill me. Then, on the other hand I have two lovely Tarantulas (Chunk and Toona) and a random spider jewelry goth fixation. Now I love this necklace, but my overpracticed imagination tells me that the spider the web was taken from is about to go Death Wish on anyone and everyone that had anything to do with the erradication of it's home in the name of wearable goth art. Oh well... I'm rich today. I can hire spider body guards.
 
 
Portrait of the Crypt Keeper? Check. I'd hang it in my mansion in one of the many guest rooms over the bed. Weird? Who cares I'm eccentrically rich! And for that reason alone I'll take all the other portaits for the other rooms as well. Mwuahahaha....
 
 
I can't even begin to tell you how long I've lusted after one of LucyGuys full fetal skeletons or the conjoined twin replicas. All daydreams aside, I think if I won the lottery these would be the first thing I'd snap up...
 

 
 
That's quite the small fortune in an of itself.... Don't wanna be too greedy. Really, I'd settle for a new mattress this Christmas. What's your ultimate want this Xmas season? 

Thursday, November 22, 2012

Happy Thanksgiving!


Is it just me, or does he look a little nervous?


Turkey Man by dancesippydance

Friday, November 16, 2012

Twisted Treasuries #13: Sharpen Your Chompers




Next week is Thanksgiving, which will kick off the 2012 hardy holiday mastication season of vegetarian roast beast feasts, Xmas cookies and yeah, maybe even a slice of fruit cake or two. Best to get sharpening those chompers now in preparation. Can't be too careful. Especially where fruit cake is involved...

One of my oddball passions are teeth. I coulda been a dentist in another life... or a serial killer. Same thing really as both tend to elicit the same amount of fear in people. Tooth art, wearable replicas... you name it, at the very least I've probably favorited it on etsy. This week, in honor of that upcoming gnosh-fest we know as Thanksgiving, Twisted Treasuries honors its pearly whites. Can't gnaw those tofurky legs without 'em!


If I'm not mistaken, Elaine Ho Studio's shop used to be known as Roadkill (just a little tidbit of info for ya), but either way, she's been at the top of my favorites since I joined etsy forever-and-a-half-ago. From teensy skulls (I have the charm-- too cute and so well made!)and sad toast pendants to dead rabbit rings, she's always had my attention. This molar charm with the heart shaped cavity is just too perfect-- I Heart Teeth.



There's a lot of cute and creepy magic happening in clay and sterling at The Monster of My Heart's shop. There are a few buttons that have caught my eye, but the teeth are what drew me in. It's kind of mind blowing at first glance to find that these beads are just replicas and not the real thing.



If I didn't list this mug in the Damned Fine Coffee Mugs treasury, I totally should have!



I try to stick to handmade for these lusting lists of mine blog-wise, but some pieces are just too amazing not to mention. This set of vintage chompers is so odd. I may be in it for the teeth, but the metal jaw is pretty cool. Like some crazy bio-mech ready to jump off the shelves and go for your jugular...



Creepy teeth stuff is pretty awesome, but jewelry made out of actual teeth (baby teeth to boot) takes the cake on creepy. Replicas are one thing, but I'm not sure I could actually bring myself to wear the real deal. Even I have my limits to morbid. Still, the ring is gorgeous.


See the rest HERE. There's so much more!

Saturday, November 10, 2012

Friday, November 9, 2012

Twisted Treasuries #12: Naughty Little Pumpkins



Halfway through the "carving" of a dozen innocent pumpkins with a hammer last week for Hallowcane Halloween 2012, I had a pretty goodly amount of guilt settle in for all the pumpkin guts I'd spilt. It's silly, yes, and maybe I just watched Trick 'r Treat one too many times in the days leading up to Halloween, but I imagined the spirits of the pumpkins reanimating their eviscerated husks, coming back to haunt me that night and exact their revenge in innumerably horrible, twisted, gore-fest of ways. 
As if that weren't enough, there's been two weeks of Twisted Treasury silence!
 
Man, I've really been playing with fire... 
 
This week Twisted Treasury is all about the vengeful pumpkin spirits that are biding their time, lurking in the shadows, waiting for the perfect opportunity to pounce in the wake of the Great Pumpkin Massacre of Hallocane 2012....


If it's cute and conniving your after to mimic my paranoid nightmares, you have to know pinkytoast is going to have to be included.


Can you imagine this thing chasing you down a dark alley? Lifesize or just how he is in miniature, it's pretty menacing either way. I'd imagine he'd have a high little cackle that'd reverberate around your very soul.
Worse yet? He has friends!!


Meatspider has a ton of shady pumpkins rolling out of his studio, but the "face" on this one really sticks with you. And then it gnaws on yours...


I'm not sure what this guy is up to and I'm not sure I want to. At first glance he looks harmless enough, but I don't know. I don't trust him.


This guy just makes me feel guilty no matter what. He has that "mom look". Know what I mean?

 
These are just flat out creepy. In a good way, yes (what on this list isn't creepy in a good way?!) but still hella creepy...
 
 
See the rest of the treasury HERE.
 
If you don't hear from me for a while, you know what happened... ;)


Thursday, November 8, 2012

On tap tonight:


Trailer

The Farm at Maple Tree Lane



May 12, 1941
Dear diary,
I remember when I was much younger, one Christmas as we were gathered at the table, Grandpa softly whispered: ‘It’s hard to believe in this very kitchen they had to cut the legs and arms off of soldiers in the Civil War’. My mother made a scene and told him not to scare us with the hogwash… but today while digging in the flower garden she found the most disturbing discovery, a human hand bone! I can’t seem to get the sight of it out of my mind.


Photo by The Brother

Before the Hammer Fell


Kinda makes me feel bad I took that hammer to them.

Kinda. ;)