Ultra Violent Radiated Maggots

Clockwork Orange Ultra Violent Radiated Maggots. According to this website “A maggot mass can reduce the body weight of a corpse by 50% in a matter of a couple of weeks.” Ultra Violent Maggots can do that in the first 24 hours, rather useful if the bodies are starting to pile up. 

The font used is Timepiece by FontMesa. I can’t remember where I copied the picture from, but here it states the artwork is from a poster for the film. The maggots are genuine glow-in-the-dark rubber, set in floral water gel. I found the maggots in the make-up aisle at a Halloween store. You can see they've become translucent in the gel, but they and the water both glow very nicely in the dark. 







I’ve provided two labels. The one that I used is curved to fit a tapered bottle of Walkerswood Jamaican Jerk Seasoning. 

You may not have a bottle of Walkerswood Jamaican Jerk Seasoning, so I'll give you a reason why you should. You can find the original recipe here. I've modified it below with extra veggies, less oil and extra lime juice. Even with the additions it is still very hot and spicy, depending on your palate you may want to use less seasoning or opt for their mild version, which I have not tried. Garnishing it with some plain yogurt will also take down the heat. It's also good as a bean dip with tortilla chips and for Halloween you can serve it as Zombie Flesh Puree.

Black Bean Soup

1 tablespoon Caribbean jerk seasoning blend
1 1/4 cups canned vegetable broth
2 15 ounce cans Caribbean-style or regular black beans, drained
1 cup skinned*, seeded, diced tomatoes (about 2 med sized tomatoes)
1 cup shredded carrots
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 cup frozen corn
1/4 cup fresh lime juice
Lime wedges
Plain yogurt

Stir 1 tablespoon seasoning blend in heavy medium saucepan over medium heat until fragrant and slightly darker in color.

Add broth, black beans, diced tomatoes and carrots. If you want a chunkier soup only add one can of beans for now. Bring to a boil, then simmer, stirring occasionally until the carrots are tender.

Transfer soup mixture and olive oil to a processor and purée until mixture is almost smooth, scraping down sides of bowl occasionally.

Transfer purée to same saucepan. Bring to boil again, add the frozen corn and additional can of beans if you chose not to puree both cans. Stir occasionally until heated through.

Remove from heat and mix in lime juice. The original recipe says to season to taste with salt and pepper, but I’ve never found it necessary. You can serve it immediately with lime wedges and yogurt, but I always prepare soups a day ahead so the flavors have time to mingle.

*If you’ve never skinned a tomato before, it’s super easy. Get a pot of boiling water and a bowl of ice water ready. Make sure stems are removed and the tomatoes are clean. Cut an “X” into the skin on the bottom of your tomatoes. Boil the tomatoes for about 20 seconds, just until the “X” starts to widen. Remove them with a slotted spoon and place them into the ice water. After they are cooled, pat them dry, pull up the skin at the “X” and just peel it back.

Bob The Skull Bag

This Bob the Builder bag was originally my son’s. He never did get into Bob the Builder, but it was the perfect size for a three year old to tote around his Hot Wheels cars, which he insisted on carrying himself, everywhere. As he out grew it, I started using it. It was the perfect size for a mom to tote around the essentials for a trip to the park, zoo, etc.

I did eventually buy a bag more my age, but I kept coming back to Bob the Builder. It’s water resistant, lightweight, extremely durable and as I've mentioned, just the right size.  An ideal bag if you ignore the fact that unless you love Bob the Builder, it’s completely hideous. Being that I'm more of a function than fashion girl, for years I did just that, ignored it.


This week I was inspired and Bob will never be the same. While you might not have a Bob the Builder bag of your own, maybe there’s a Disney Princess or Wiggles bag in your life or at the thrift store that’s in need of a makeover.

The bag is a combination of canvas, felt and vinyl. To decorate it I used my limited palette of Sharpie’s, Sharpie fabric pens, Testors Paint Markers, one fabric glitter marker and two buttons glued on with E6000. 

Dirt and Worms

We can’t seem to celebrate any holiday around here without doing something twisted and Mother’s Day is no exception. Years ago our plan to plant flowers was thwarted by a storm. With two disappointed toddlers on my hands, I told them we were going to have fun with dirt and worms anyway and surprised them with Oreo dirt and gummy worms. Every year since, rain or shine we have to have dirt and worms, a dish most people reserve for Halloween.

You can find a recipe for the quick and dirty version, at Kraft.

These days I run away screaming from anything involving Cool Whip, but I remember when my taste buds were young and used to think eating a frozen spoonful of that stuff was a little slice of heaven. 

There’s no accounting for youth. 

Now I can’t stand the taste of fake. Fake cream, fake chocolate, fake worms…not that I eat real ones, I just prefer to go without.

So I’ve modified this recipe for Double Chocolate Pudding Parfait. I make the pudding the day before, but really the whole works keeps at least four days (it’s never stayed around longer than that). I just keep the additional cookie crumbles off the top until right before serving. Even if you still want to make pudding out of a box, just substituting real whipped cream for Cool Whip makes a big difference.
 

Dirt and Worms
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/4 cup sugar
2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
2 cups whole milk
4 ounces fine-quality semisweet chocolate, finely chopped*
1 tablespoon unsalted butter

2 tablespoons sugar
1 cup chilled heavy cream
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

15 chocolate sandwich cookies, crushed
Gummy worms

Sift together cornstarch, 1/4 cup sugar, cocoa, and a pinch of salt into a heavy medium saucepan, then gradually whisk in milk. Bring to a boil, whisking constantly, then boil, whisking, until thickened, about 3 minutes. Remove from heat and whisk in chopped chocolate and butter until melted. Transfer pudding to another dish and chill. Let set for at least an hour.

Mix ½ cup of the cookie crumbles into the pudding. 

Whip cream with vanilla and remaining 2 tablespoons sugar until it just holds stiff peaks. Fold into the pudding mixture and divide among 10 dishes.

Top with remaining crumbles and worms.

*I'm lazy and usually use chocolate bars that are thin enough to break into pieces by hand. 

As I mentioned in my Creepmas Confections, I like using Lindt’s Sweet Dark (Sadly this is no longer available, but Dove Dark is a mild dark with a nice flavor.) and heavy whipping cream that hasn’t been ultra-pasteurized. I also chill my bowl and beater in the freezer before whipping the cream. 

I've always had a problem with the pudding getting a little clumpy at the bottom of the pan.  Even constantly stirring there's just so much surface area a spoon or whisk doesn't consistently reach.  This silicone spoonula has changed all that.  It's a spoon so it stirs, but it's also a spatula so it really scraps the sides and bottom of the pan and silicone so it can take the heat.  Sorry for sounding like an infomercial but I find I can actually keep all the pudding in constant motion with this bad boy.

Bon appétit!

Update: First, to give an individual serving of dirt a more grown up taste, pulverize a pinch of instant coffee with the back of a spoon and sprinkle it on.

Second, the dirt and worms combo on Mother’s Day brought back some cherished childhood memories, namely The Hearse Song, that I learned from my lovely mother. I remember it being more of a poem than a song but I couldn’t quite remember the words and neither could she and none of the versions I found online are quite right.

After chatting about it, my memory jogged a bit and this is how I remember it:

Did you ever think when a hearse goes by,
That you would be the next to die?
They’d wrap you in a dirty sheet
And bury you six feet deep
Things would go well for just one week
Then the boards would begin to creak
The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out
The ants play pinochle on your snout
You turn all green and slimy and puss runs out
And me without a spoon.

Between this and Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts, I thought my mom knew the coolest stuff.

Bleeding Backwards

Ok, I just couldn't let this one go.  If you'll recall my last post I found my new catch phrase and the inspiration for my new film that I will never make. Which is more because of my lack of video equipment and the skills to adequately use said non-existent equipment than any restraining order Mr Reznor, may or may not have requested due to diligent efforts to secure his collaboration with the soundtrack.

But I did wake up with fragments of a poem, that I worked together into this:

Bleeding Backwards

I was caught up in a daydream
            When I stumbled into you
I thought you were a daydream
            When I tumbled into you
You drew me from myself
            And that is when I knew
Now I see you bleeding backwards
            And I know not what to do

The days they followed lightly
            Scarce our feet did touch the ground
The days they followed brightly
            Scarce our hearts knew what they’d found
The days they ended nightly
            With you wrapped within my arms
Now I see you bleeding backwards
            And I’m lost without your charms 

I thought I heard you whisper
            Another lover’s name
I thought I saw your gaze drop
            To hide your face in shame
I thought I felt you shudder
            And pull yourself away
Now I see you bleeding backwards
            And my love for you decay

You swore it wasn’t true
            But I saw through all your lies
You swore it wasn’t true
            More foul deceitful cries
I know not now my rage
            As I struck that fatal blow
But I see you bleeding backwards
            And how the blood does flow

I see that there was no one
            Just a notion in my head
I see that there was no one
            Just the monsters that I fed
And now I’m left with no one    
            Just regret and pain whereby
I shall see you bleeding backwards
            To the day you caught my eye


I hope this has exercised the demons and I can finally lay this project to rest, it's a long way to go for a potion bottle. I purposely stayed away from definitive pronouns because I believe love isn’t defined by gender or orientation and neither is murderous passion.



Liquid Moonlight

Liquid Moonlight was created by a specialized team of lycanthrope scientists employed by Wolfpack Infusions, because sometimes you just don’t want to wait for a full moon to be able to transform.

The font used for Liquid Moonlight is Alice in Wonderland.  Just for fun I borrowed the side effects from Viagra’s website, since this could be considered a potency issue. 

For directions on how to fold the label head on over to here. After the folding and cutting I laid it out flat again and brushed on a thin layer of acrylic varnish. 

 After that dried, I refolded it lengthwise and glued the open edges together on the end panels. Then I did the fancy fold in the middle and glued those together.  This helps to keep the pages lined up.  It's still a little off since the outside "cover" is the same size as the inside pages, but it works.  Then I colored the cut edges with marker.



I was just going to use an 1/8th inch punch in the corner and tie it on. Instead I braided some very thin hemp with a few seed beads, wrapped it around and knotted the ends together.  I ran two strands inside the booklet down the middle and the other four down the outside, two to the front and two to the back near the spine and knotted them altogether underneath.  This holds the booklet quite securely and it's something new I haven't done before.  
   
The content is a mixture of floral water gel and acrylic paint mixture of black, blue and silver.

While I was looking up the phases of the moon, (I can never remember gibbous, even though it is so close to gibbons and who can forget monkeys?) and I noticed a lot of links referring to the female cycle and how it corresponds to the moon.

Zero links on whether or not a werewolf ovulates with the full moon, closest hits are references to the movie Ginger Snaps, which I really enjoyed right up until they started with the cheesy special effects.  Note to aspiring directors: Sometimes less is more,  it never hurts to leave a little to the imagination, watch some Hitchcock, he’ll show you how it’s done.  

Anyway believe what you will about human females and the moon, I’m just happy to have found this sentence “Today, many of us are bleeding backwards.”  I just love the way that sounds.

If I had any skill in cinematography, my first film would be a short entitled “Bleeding Backwards”. A sweet, tender love affair, darkened by insecurities and misunderstandings until they reach a boiling point of murderous jealousy.  It would be interspersed with stop-motion blood pooling backwards, telling the story in reverse from the bloody, unwarranted tragic death to the chance moment when our lovers first meet. Trent Reznor would do the soundtrack. 

As it is I'm only skilled in creating bad poetry, but it'll have to do until Trent calls me back.

Petrified Poison Orange

One day at work I discovered a forgotten orange hiding behind my monitor.  I don’t make a habit of losing fruit in odd places, but I’d assume most fruits left to their own devises would get gross and moldy.  This orange was perfectly dried, which I found fascinating because I’m easily amused.  So I kept it in a little box, with other strange curios.  All it needed to come back into the light was a jar and a backstory. 
 
That’s where Genuine Artifacts comes in, purveyor of historical oddities.  They are based out of Yalgoo, Australia.  Yalgoo means “place of blood”. [Other sources differ, but in this case I think “place of blood” sounds better for business.]

Without further ado I present to you the Petrified Poison Orange.  This relic dates back to the 16^th century when the poisoned orange was commonly used in spells. Then in the early 1700’s it quickly fell out of favor when poison apples came into vogue for the upper class witch.

The label is glued to cereal box cardboard for structure.  I used a textured canning jar, with an area of smooth glass for affixing labels.  In this case it serves as a viewing window.  Spanish moss provides a nice cushion and the lid is aged with acrylic paints. 
 

These days I do occasionally dry fruits on purpose and I find on top of the fridge is the most convenient place to do so.  It’s a warm, dry area and as a bonus items are up out of the way, since they can take weeks to completely dry. I've had good success so far with oranges, limes and shrunken head apples. For whole fruits make sure they are free of dirt, mold, soft spots and the surface is dry.  Rotate them once in while and check for mold.  Since the shrunken heads are peeled, I check them daily for the first two weeks until most of the moisture is gone. If you do get a little surface mold, just wiping it off with white vinegar should do the trick, but if anything goes soft it needs to be tossed.

Draught of Living Death

Leticia Somnolens’ Draught of Living Death is based on the Harry Potter franchise.  Leticia didn’t invent it, but she’s well known for having used it.  I felt having her name on the label gives it more credibility than “made by Morris the dwarf troll (he has a very interesting lineage) that lives in my basement”.

It’s a little four inch bottle from the craft store.  I painted the inside with acrylics in metallic black, green and glitter.

Originally I had plan to just swirl the paint around the bottom two thirds of the bottle, to give it that partially filled look, but with the tiny narrow neck it just takes too long to dry.  Beside you have to keep rotating it so most of the paint doesn’t wind up at the bottom.

I ended up alternating between setting it upside-down to drain excess paint and right side up to recoat the inside as it dripped back down.  I also added a little purple faux stain glass paint and some clear micro beads just for fun.

Once it was well coated and mostly dry I left it to finish curing in the depths of my secret laboratory where I wouldn’t be tempted to watch paint dry.

After forgetting about it for a sufficient amount of time it was finally completely dry and I was then able to move on to the next phase of filling it with floral water gel.  This was also a bit painful since the already narrow neck was reduced even further by the buildup of paint.  After a few tries in which a bamboo skewer was useful in removing unintentional gel plugs (those can be heated and reused), I was able to get a thin steady stream going, which created little bubbles and filled the bottle. I also shook it up a little with my thumb over the opening for good measure and created a couple larger bubbles.

Overall the contents were a big nuisance, but it was worth it.  Pictures don’t do it justice, but it’s murky and glittery and when you hold it up to the light you can see all the little air bubbles.

The skull on the bottle is a cheap plastic ring painted to match the metal chain, which I raided from my jewelry supplies.

I glued the label to a cereal box for thickness and used a 1/8” hole punch. The fonts used are Vtc-NueTattooScript by Vigilante TypeFaceCorp and Misfits by Ravenous Media. If you look closely there are tiny Jolly Rogers added to the vine circling the frame. Skulls are like glitter, you can never have too much and they look good on everything. I also coated the label with three coats of acrylic varnish to make it shiny.

 

North American Rough Skinned Newts

These are North American Rough Skinned Newts in pure olive oil, brought to you by The Happy Medium.  The inside label states, “Loaded full of tetrodotoxin our newts are sure to cause paralysis and even death if used properly.  A must have for any Zombification ritual. “

Rough Skinned Newts are not only adorable, they are highly toxic.  Tetrodotoxin can indeed cause paralysis and death.  Whether or not you can use it to make zombies hasn’t been proven, but luckily my potions don’t fall under FDA regulations. 

I imagine The Happy Medium is just that, a cheery sort that prefers tea leaves and tarot cards, but she has a crystal ball on display, because clients like to see that sort of thing.  This potions bit is just something she does on the side out of her kitchen, which works out quite well except for that unfortunate incident with the ingredients mix-up while making tea cakes for the church bake sale. 

I also imagine she has a penchant for decorating with doilies, which probably explains the label.  It’s all pink and purple with swirly flowers and starry fonts, which by the way is 101! Star Lit Nght by Nght’s Place. 

I like to repurpose cereal boxes for folded labels.  They are just the right thickness and they already have nice straight folds along the sides.  I used a 1/8” hole punch, with some raffia to attach it to the bottle.

For newts I used soft plastic fishing bait. They reacted with the floral water gel and infused it with their beautiful green hue, but they also curled up, shrunk and sunk to the bottom.

Pipe Cleaner Skeleton

This is my version of a pipe cleaner skeleton created years ago to make a little boy happy.

 

Why was this young man obsessed with skeletons? Pyrates.  Not POTC pirates, but MegaBloks Pyrates. Later MegaBlocks did make a few POTC sets, but they didn’t have the same magic.

Here’s a little taste of that magic where you can see the whole skeleton crew in action.

Enough about pirates, it’s time for skeletons.

You will need 6 pipe cleaners or chenille stems, 2 googly eyes and a bit of glue.

Step 1 – The Skull 

Make a circle with the center of the pipe cleaner, leaving a 2.5" tail on either side.

Fold the end pointing down, across to the left.

Then fold it in half, tucking the end back around to front. Now your circle should be smushed into an oval, with a smaller portion (the jawbone) hanging below the fold.

 

Shape your smushed oval into a skull shape, and make sure the tail you just wrapped around is flat and tight. Now take the remaining tail, give it a little squiggle and twist the end around the top of the skull.

Step 2 - The Pelvis

 

Leave 4" of pipe cleaner for a spine and make a small loop for half the pelvis.

Make a second loop and wrap the end over and around at a diagonal to hold everything in place. If this picture made you giggle, we all know what you're thinking.

 

Fold a half inch of the spine over the jawbone and give it a couple of good twists.

 

Step 3 - The Arms

  Find the middle of your pipe cleaner, leave a little neck room and twist it around twice.

 

Step 4 - The Ribs

For the first two ribs start by making a half inch bend at the end of a pipe cleaner. Point it down, against the spine.

 

Give it twist all the way around and then pull it to the right.

Bring it around to the left making a loop.  To gauge the size of your loop, loosely wrap the remainder of your pipe cleaner around to make two loops about the same size, then go a tad smaller than that for your first loop.  Secure it in place by wrapping the pipe cleaner around the spine again.

Make your second loop, and again wrap the end around to hold it in place.

Repeat again for second set of ribs.  Start by wrapping around the half inch bend.

Make two more ribs, securing them with a full wrap around after each loop.  Place two fingers inside the rib cage and pull in opposite directions to the side to shape them.

 

Step 5 - The Legs

Find the middle of a pipe cleaner and bring through both sides of the pelvis.

Wrap the legs around once to secure them.

 

To finish up make a little horseshoe bend to make a hand.

Then twist the end or the thumb around to keep it in place. 

Bend the shoulders, elbows, knees and feet.  The last touch is to add the googly eyes with a dab of glue. He's actually a durable little fellow, we have a rainbow of skeletons that have been joining us for Halloween the last five years with only the occasional minor reshaping. 

 

Sugar Skull Bunnies

 

 

This all started when my eight year old invited me to draw with her the other week.  She drew a flowering lily pad reflecting on the water and I drew this Easter egg, sugar skull inspired bunny.  Over the next few days she continued practicing lily pads, and I decided to follow her lead and work on improving my bunnies. 

 

I colored my first two sketches with colored pencils and liked them less as a result.  I like coloring with crayons more and that gave me the idea to turn my sketches into coloring pages.

 I used Adobe Photoshop, which I’ve been slowly learning on a need to know basis. This video was very helpful, although I kept to using basic lines.

Now I can mess up as much as I want, the kids can color them and you can too.