Boo Spooky

Shadow Farm giveaway!!!

Kimily — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 03:04:48 +0000

Dave is doing his first ever giveaway over on the Shadow Farm!!! Check out what he has for the lucky winner:

The Shadow Farm Easter 2010 Giveaway

While you are over there check out his Etsy shop and all the other props he has created. The man is a genius when it comes to Halloween props!!!

Artist Spotlight – Colin Stimpson

Kimily — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 04:40:17 +0000

Colin Stimpson is an awesome artist. His Bio can be read here. His work tends to lend to animation, which I normally shy away from due to it’s ‘fairytale’ feeling. I prefer less ‘Princessy’ type stuff but I have to admit, he has me hooked on his Witches. They have enough of the old Hag, creep feel to them and it draws me in. No pun intended, heh. I will be buying the book How to Cook Children: A grisly recipe book by Martin Howard and illustrated by Colin Stimpson

You can see his work on his website and on his blog. And here we go with the art work…

This is from a book he illustrated for called The Wickedest Witch, I think. He has the pictures listed in the same blog post. I love the trees!!!

The rest of these photos are from How to Cook Children

Mad Elaine de la Moustache

Iris O’Rambly

Sheila Q. Barby

There are other photos, these are just a few. If his style tickles your fancy, go over and check him out.

Armature Stand

Kimily — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 03:40:12 +0000

I’m going to be creating three dolls starting this week and needed an armature stand to do them. They will be in a sitting position so I needed them to be supported while I worked on and posed them.

I found an armature stand How-to on Noadi’s site on Squidoo.

Here is a link to the How-to in .PDF format, there is a link to the video on the .PDF if you are more of a visual learner like I am. The How-to was posted from iSculpt.org which has much useful info on Sculpting.

The stand took me roughly 20 minutes to build, not including the few minutes it took me to cut the hinge with my Dremel, sparks pretty. I bought the threaded rods in the sizes I needed so I didn’t have to cut them.

Here is my finished product…

Aye Aye you cute little creatures

Kimily — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 21:51:31 +0000

I love funny looking little creatures. I actually find the ones that most people label ‘ugly’ as very adorable. Probably why I love Chinese Cresteds and Xoloitzcuintli dogs. I am currently owned by a Chinese Crested “Whisper”.

I also have a thing for Sloths, Flying Fox Bats, Fruit Bats…ok, many different types of Bats and other little things I can’t think of at the moment. Did I ever tell you guys I tried my hand at Little Brown Bat rehab? They have a very LOW survival rate once in rehab so I stepped away from it. That’s a story for a different time.

The reason for this here post is because of the Aye Aye. I’m sure many of you have seen the pictures of the Aye Aye floating around the internet and may have wondered what it is, like I did, or maybe you didn’t, heh! You can find the official explanation on Wiki, that the Aye Aye is a species of Lemur from Madagascar.

Here are a few pictures of the mysterious creature I speak of, I’m thinking I may have to do some creature creations in Poly Clay…

Photo by David Haring – Baby Aye Aye

Below photos found on Daily Artisan

Cupid’ness

Kimily — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 04:39:32 +0000

Valentines Day is just around the corner so I thought I should jump into the spirit with some Valentine love for everyone. I don’t have a honey, yes that would mean I am single, so I don’t have anyone’s heart to carve out…erm… I mean I don’t have anyone to cut out hearts for. ::: giggles :::

Here are a few Valentine’ee pictures in such…

Chad Savage has done some awesome Valentine art. They are available over on his Etsy Shop.

The Halloween Lovers

Hallontine

Happy Phantom over on Flickr captured this photo in a cemetery. If I saw this thing with a little bow and arrow… I would run, I would run really fast.

Spooky food…mmm cake

Kimily — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 06:15:48 +0000

I am amazed by cakes now-a-days. I don’t mean the typical, Happy Birthday Joey cakes, no… I mean these designer cakes that are shapes put together with colors that amaze. It seems they can do almost anything with cake, buttercream and a bunch of other stuff I will probably never use in the kitchen…including my airbrush, at least I won’t be using it with my food, heh.

ZOMBIES! over on Facebook posted a post showing a picture of a zombie cake, I had to follow the link, and what I found just tickled me. Threadless.com and Chris Cardinal had an online cake contest called ThreadCakes. You have got to go over and check these cakes out… amazement…sheer amazement. The designs for the cakes are based off of Threadless t-shirt designs…it’s part of the rules.

Here are a few that grabbed me by the eyeballs. If you click on the pictures of the cakes the link will take you to its entry and all of the ingredients plus the photos of progression.

I wish I were here is the name of the original t-shirt design. Obvious that the devil wanted to make snow angels…

Now check out the cake…

The next one is called The Red and here is the original t-shirt design:

Now for the cake, ::: giggles ::: …it’s awesome!!

The last I will show you is Zombie Nomz, here is the original t-shirt design:

…and now the awesome’ness that is the cake…

More spooky’ness…

Kimily — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 05:05:55 +0000

Photo by Sean… on Flickr.

Picture walking along the tree line, just under the overhanging canopy. The daylight makes you feel safe and the fog wraps around you. As darkness falls so do the things that go bump in the night…

Photo by Subtle Touch Photography on Flickr

Who do you think this tree is reaching for. If it was night I wouldn’t want to find out.

For the love of Spooky Tree’s

Kimily — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 22:55:58 +0000

I know I have mentioned this before, but it’s always worth mentioning… I love spooky tree’s. My first spooky tree love started when I was a child living in Alabama. My grandmother had a HUGE pecan tree in her front yard. Now maybe the tree seemed huge because I was small, either way… it was my tree. I played beneath it, ate it’s pecan’s, gazed up into it’s branches.
In the early 90’s a Tornado came through and took it away. When my family called to tell us about the damage to the property, we had been in Alaska since 77′, the first question I asked was “Did the tree make it?” She didn’t, all I could do was cry.

I don’t have any pictures of that wonderful tree, but I am going to ask mom to look for some since she is down in Alabama helping her sick brother, sister and brother in law.

This is the closest picture I have found so far:

I found the picture on this website.

I don’t believe this next tree is a Pecan but no matter the species…its awesome! Found the pic on this website.

Feeling neglectful

Kimily — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 07:14:37 +0000

I’m feeling a bit, ok a bunch, neglectful of this here website. Numerous excuses come to mind, none are truly good enough.

I must not neglect the spooky’ness, it has done nothing but treat me right. So to set things right I’ve decided to grab a few pics to appease my spooky bone and to give the readers something to gaze upon.

Fixer Upper – Photo by Dempster Lane’s

United Pumpkins – Photo by Sparth

I’m a slacker, I know…

Kimily — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 00:11:35 +0000

Man this winter has kicked me in the teeth when it comes to doing anything after work/on the weekends, except sit on the couch and watch TV. The older I get the more I hibernate in winter and get a very bad case of the lethargics.

So what am I going to do about it? I have decided that to get me out of my non-creating rut I’m going to bring Super Sculpy to work with me to get me going on making the miniature Halloween props/art dolls that I have wanted to start on.
I have also decided to go and buy $20 in Lottery tickets to see if I can get out of Alaska sooner than the summer of 2012 date I have decided on.

I will get back to the art doll explanation in a minute, money tends to trump things at the moment.
What would I buy with the lottery money? Well, after taxes I’m looking at around $350K, its a $500K lottery. First thing is to get the current home I’m living in remodeled for selling, I’m thinking around $20K for everything. The house is in my parents name, I never bought it from them but instead pay the mortgage every month. While the house is having some work done we, we being the fam and I, would zip down to Bend, Oregon to have a look around and I would start looking for a house. I’m thinking I would keep the house price around $200k, 4 bedroom, 2+ baths, 3 car garage (have to have room for the studio and Halloween props). If I find a house at that time, I would buy it, then come back home to get ready to move. We would sell the house and my parents would keep all the profits from it. Once moved I would buy a brand new GMC truck in Oregon, and my old truck, that would still be here in Alaska, could either be kept by my parents or I would sell it.
Thats about it, besides paying off bills and making sure I had a bit left over to live on before I found work.

Now to the art dolls. I have never been a doll kinda gal. Ok, I take that back… I use to blow up Barbies when me cousin and I would attack her with his GI Joes. Total Tom Boy as a kid and I still have quite a bit of it remaining. With that said… I have found a new appreciation for dolls as I have gotten older and realized that all dolls don’t have to be little Princess’s or Drama Queens or even be owned by little Princess’s or Drama Queens.
I love Halloween such that I have found that I need to scale down, not scale back, on my Halloween creations. Why not make smaller versions of the props I have built/want to build? I’m aware that putting a 12″ sized rendition of Cucur or Mauly (to name the most current full sized props I have built) in my front yard isn’t going to scare anyone. What it will do though is: 1) Get some of the overwhelming prop ideas into physical creation 2) Hopefully make me some extra money.

My main problem in starting anything new is: researching it until I’m blue in the face… no, make that red in the face. By then I have had so many other ideas hit me that something entirely different is what I want to focus on and off I go researching. The funny thing is… I know that if I just start doing something, I get into it and the research didn’t do me much good anyway… but I still find myself in that same cycle. I also think I have a fear of failure gnawing at my subconscious. Yes I have given it the finger and it persists to keep gnawing.

So besides being an A.D.D artist, I am now attempting to jump into an area I know very little about…erm wait, I have researched the hell out of art dolls and should by all rights be a professional, heh!

I would like a push though by any and all that have found the tips and tricks of working with Poly Clay for making Art Dolls. That and air dry clay will be the materials of choice. I do worry about air dry clay not being strong enough for items that may be pose-able though.

Any input is greatly appreciated!!!

** Update **

Here is a picture of the head I started. First miniature head…wooo hoooo!!