Happy! Creepmas

Add a little Happy! to your Creepmas cheer.  I finally watched the season premier and I have to say this it what the Creepmas season is all about.  There's lots of bright festive blood, inappropriate humor and a deranged Santa Claus.  It's kind of like Deadpool got together with Bad Santa and they made a bastard mini-series.  More info and the first episode available at  SYFY

Creepmas Gingerbread House

This is my second attempt at a creepy gingerbread house.  The first was during my first year joining Creepmas!  That one was a haunted house kit that I tweaked a little with a skull wreath and some icicles.  This year I wanted to make one that almost looked normal, at least from a distance, standing on one leg, with squinty eyes. The kind of house someone might make if they had seen a real gingerbread house, but then had gotten it all wrong.

I realize not everyone wants to muddle through my ramblings on a rather mediocre gingerbread house, so I will interrupt this post to show you this awesome creation by the Keeling family.  If you remember last year I posted about their Overlook Hotel. Go to imgur.com to check out all the pictures, where all the movie magic of Psycho has been recreated with edibles.  Yes, even the famous shower scene.  

So back to the rather anticlimactic creation of my house...there were a few things to consider, the main thing being that I'm complete rubbish when it comes to decorating with icing.

I heard somewhere that it's easier if you do the decorating first and then assemble the pieces together. I figure it couldn't end up any worse, so why not? The haunted house came with two packages of icing powder, one black and one gray.  I still had the gray one left, so I mixed about a half cup of it with a bit of black coloring and enough water to make it fairly thin and painted all the pieces.  While that was drying I assembled the houses from a mini village kit, because kids and normal stuff...

Dried it was a lot lighter of course, but it also had a mottled look.  I don't know if that's because I added food coloring or didn't mix it as well as I thought I did.  I wish I knew because I think the light and dark gray splotchiness looked very wall-like.

I meant to roll out black jelly beans and use them as windows. They where a bit hard so I warmed them up first.  The second batch I gradually heated in the microwave a little bit at a time until they were just warm enough to roll out between wax paper.  Oh the first batch, you're wondering? If you've ever said to yourself, "Well I might like to play with a bit of napalm, if only it was licorice scented."  No.  No, you wouldn't.

Moving on...I did get jelly beans rolled out and they did look quite interesting.  Some of the shell melted into the center goo, some it cracked in an almost mosaic pattern. But I could tell they weren't ever going to be windows, no matter how hard they tried, so I decided to go with curtains.

I rolled out gumdrops to go behind the curtains for a little contrast. Last time I rolled out gumdrops and cut them into windows and then completely botched outlining them. But this time they were going to be perfect because everything was still laid out flat.  All I'm going to say is that gingerbread icing is just mean and nasty.  It doesn't stick when you want it to. You're going along thinking you're laying down a nice line of piping and then the whole thing just pulls off.  And then you're stuck trying to push it back into place without smushing it.  I swear it enjoys being difficult.

Since I'm not good at the whole icing thing I mostly used it to glue things on.  I used the Wilton skeleton bones candy mold, mini skulls candy mold and a button mold to make stuff.  I only partially filled the skull molds so they weren't too thick.  I didn't utilize the foot/leg bone component of the skeleton mold, but now that I think about it, two of those together would frame out a window nicely.

My other plan was to have candy eyes peeking out the windows, because I remembered LadyM doing that and it looked awesome. She also knows how to accessorize a house with candy bones. Unfortunately, I forgot I used up my candy eyes on the cake pop monsters.  So I used candy pearls and dabbed on a black iris with gel food coloring on a toothpick.

I think this little guy looks a bit like Frank from the first Hellraiser, before he gets his skin suit.  The resemblance is purely accidental as I was just poking the red icing with a toothpick to get it to stay put.

And here you can see my sorry swirls.  I was trying to channel my inner Tim Burton, but the stupid icing wasn't seeing things my way.  Again I did the roof décor prior to assembly.  I think that did help, but then I dinked it up fumbling the roof while putting it together. The gingerbread gods hate me.  I do like the skeleton hands capping off the ends of the roof. 

...and this is my kiwi tree.  I bought dried kiwi around Halloween, because it was green and funky looking and kiwi is delicious.  Dried kiwi is not delicious, it's not good at all.  But you can make little snips around edges of the slices and then layer them together with a spot of icing and boom, you got a pretty cool looking tree.  The "rocks" are also from Halloween.  A flavor of M&M's called Cookies & Screeem.  They are too disgusting to eat, but great for landscaping. 

Last up is this trio of snowmen.  The one in the back is my daughters creation, beside the gaping wound in his belly and guts spilling out, his head has turned inside out.  Who says kids don't use their imaginations anymore? The one in front lost his head.  Actually I tried to use red icing to join his head to his body. Stupid icing wouldn't stick them together, but it left a red stain, so I just went with it.  The guy in the back, without any blood is held together with a toothpick.  The heads are regular marshmallows and the bodies are jumbo sized. The details were made with a toothpick dipped in black gel food coloring.  Mind where you put your fingers, I transferred black coloring everywhere.  

Santa Roaches

Chocolate Covered Santa Roaches were one of this years Creepmas treats.  These are so easy to make this isn't really even a recipe.  But you will need:

Chocolate [I used Doves Dark, it's a mild dark for those that can't handle the strong stuff]

Pecan halves

Chocolate Jimmies

White and Red candy melts

White Pearl decorating candy [optional, could use white candy melts instead]

Sprinkle a layer of jimmies on a jelly roll pan covered with parchment paper.

Melt the chocolate, temper it.  Dip the pecans in one at time.  Pull them out flat side down on a fork, tap the fork on the side of the bowl to remove the excess chocolate. Use another fork to slide the pecan off and onto the jimmie covered parchment.  Let chocolate completely set before moving on.

Below is a visual on improperly tempered chocolate.  I have tempering info in my Rat Truffle post.  You can see starting from the top left hand corner my chocolate is not tempered correctly, which has resulted in an unsightly bloom.  This does not effect the taste at all, but it can take longer to set.  You can see how the very act of stirring and dipping more roaches actually helped the tempering process as they go from full bloom, to swirly to all smooth and shiny.   

After they were set I microwaved the red candy melts in a freezer ziplock, snipped a corner off and zigzagged a little triangle shape onto their little heads.  I added a candy pearl for the hat tassel, but you could also pipe white candy melt, which I used for the brim of the hats.

And these are the Santa Roaches in the bathroom.  Yes they've been up since the craft party just so they could join in the Creepmas festivities this year.  I made about 30 little hats.  And that alone is probably grounds to have me committed...Here they are up close:

I may be a little crazy, but I am not the only one. 

Check out this Christmas Caroling Cockroach Diorama.

 

and this ornament...

source: now-here-this.timeout.com

and this festive bugger...

source: pinterest.com

Creepmas Makeup Tutorials

Looking to glam up for a holiday party?  These looks will definitely have all eyes on you...

I love this Christmas Present Zombie look.  It's so colorful and festive.  She has a bunch of tutorials suitable for Creepmas.  A Jack and Shelly mashup, evil snowman, Krampus, peppermint candy creature, and that nasty elf on a shelf, just to name a few.  She actually has so many creepy holiday looks you could probably sport a different one for each day of Creepmas.  She also has a video where she addresses contacts.  I'm paraphrasing a bit here, but she has some sage advice like don't buy the cheapest ones you can find and then stick them in your eye.  

This Yeti and the following Candy Monster

are even more involved with prosthetics.  

The next one's aren't quite as complicated...

Love to accessorize?  How about with a candy cane through the cheek?

Maybe you're more into shiny baubles...

I found this video amusing, but if you'd like something more professional watch the one below.  I do prefer the ornament placing in this one.  I would go mental having one of my eyes covered like the following video.

Or maybe just a nice little bloody snowflake accent.  Pair it with a little black dress and you are ready for an enchanted evening of holiday merriment.

 

If I'm being honest, I'm not talented enough to pull off most of these. I think I could manage a bloody snowflake, but that's about it.  But this last video, I could rock this look, maybe not as well as she does, but this one is definitely more my speed and I love her sense of humor. "It's a judge free zone."

Creepmas Yard Displays

First of all I should have pointed this out day one, but I forgot all about it.  There's this cool Krampus Advent Calendar online http://regina.bayern/.

Continuing on, earlier this year after admiring the Krampus set at a local haunt, I was curious if with the latest surge of Krampus enthusiasm if homeowners were including him in their holiday displays.

I did find this display which caused quite an uproar in the neighborhood decorating contest.   I love the Krampus, the homeowner did a fantastic job creating him.

At the end of the article they said they had a few "Nightmare Before Christmas" entries also. I love it when people come over to the dark side. I failed to find pictures of those, but I did something a little closer to home...

You have to read the article where there are more amazing pictures, but basically this guy makes all his own props to create a display that spans down the block.  After Halloween it gets pulled back to just his yard but he changes it up to match the movie's timeline. I can't imagine the time and effort that goes into this.  Some people are truly extraordinary. Currently the facebook page is posting Christmas Town.  While this isn't quite in my backyard it's close enough that I'm embarrassed that it's taken me this long to find out this exists.  

This is a cool video of the display:

Merry Creepmas!

The Creepmas Creature finally showed it's ugly mug around the neighborhood delivering treats.

There were Krampus Krispies, Krampus Clusters, Krampus Cupcakes and Chocolate Covered Santa Roaches (for those on a Krampus free diet).

Pictures and recipes to follow.  Merry Creepmas everyone!

A Different Sort of Krampus Baby Altogether

And then there's these types of Krampus babies...

This super cute print by Sugar Fueled Art is available at Etsy. 

And another adorable print at Etsy.  This one is by Rambling Eclectica .

Sadly this one by Brett Manning is no longer available on Etsy, but she has lots of other cool stuff. I love that face, it makes me think maybe Krampus was a bit mischievous as a child.  

This cutie is by Tom Bagley over at 7 Deadly Sinners.

That gleeful expression!  This one is by Felicia Cano, another phenomenal artist. 

Seriously if you don't check out all her stuff you are only hurting yourself.

This Krampus baby was sold on Ebay by walliejohnwayne

who has a lot of interesting things for sale. 

Last I will leave you a link to this Krampus baby I saw on Instagram, so you can choose whether or not you want to explain to the person looking over your shoulder why you are looking at a cloven hoofed, horned baby with a rather prominent Prince Albert. The artistry is actually pretty amazing.   

Krampus Baby and other Krampus Tunes

“Consensual Krampus”

Source: dirgemag.com Artist: Ryan Heshka

Ah the first day of Creepmas, if you listen closely you can faintly hear the distant screams of naughty children, the slink of evil elves posing themselves in false whimsy and the clinking of bones as the Skeleton King makes holiday preparations...and somewhere sticks are being gathered to punish the wicked.  

Normally on the 1st Day of Creepmas I would don my Creepmas costume and deliver goodies to all the naughty neighbors, but tonight I'm going an event called "Inappropriate Song Night".  In the spirit of Creepmas and inappropriate songs, I give you lyrics to "Krampus Baby."

[Update:  Inappropriate Song Night was completely worth delaying the opening ceremonies for Creepmas. I can’t wait to go again.  And I am totally counting watching a striptease, which was amazing by the way, to “You’re a Mean One, Mr Grinch.” as Creepmas festivities.]

I have to admit that "Santa Baby" is a more complex song than I ever realized.  There's rhymes going on that I never paid attention to until I started to pick it apart, like "missed, kissed, list" and "tree, Tiffany, me".  And just rhyming isn't enough, there's a rhythm and intonation that has to be respected.  I couldn't quite pull it off. I've taken some liberties. And I'm left wondering if anyone at the time was really considering the purchase of platinum mines or they were just stuck for a word pairing with the proper flow.   Anyway for better or worse this is what I came up with.

Krampus Baby

Krampus baby, just discipline me under the tree
You see
Been an awfully bad girl
Krampus baby, so hurry down the chimney tonight

Krampus baby, and drag me out along by my hair
downstairs
Toss me into your sack
Krampus baby, so hurry down the chimney tonight

Think of all the things I've done
Think of all the mischief that I've caused for fun
Who wouldn't want to punish me
Only you get to be the one

Krampus baby, I wanna swat
And really that's not a lot
Been so naughty all year
Krampus baby, so hurry down the chimney tonight

Krampus honey, one little thing I really need
Indeed
To be tied up by you
Krampus baby, so hurry down the chimney tonight

Krampus cutie, and whip me with a buddle of sticks
That's it
Or a cat o' nine tails
Krampus cutie, and hurry down the chimney tonight

Come throw me over your back
Drag me down to hell in your little sack
I've really been oh so bad
Let's see if you can be bad too

Krampus baby, forgot to mention one little sin
You'll grin
When I tell it to you
Krampus baby, so hurry down the chimney tonight
Hurry down the chimney tonight
Hurry, tonight


I figured I can't be the only one who ever considered a Krampus parody of Santa Baby and I wasn't disappointed.  I love how different each version is.

This is another fun Krampus song by Jon Lajoie.  I love the lyrics. 

If you like a little headbanging with your Creepmas music, this one is a gem by Craterface.

Make sure to check out all the other participating Creepers at Creepmas.com.

Zombie Turkeys

It just isn't Thanksgiving until the zombie turkeys ravage through the local fowl population.

For those of you who haven't been following along for last umpteen years, I'm contractually obligated to make rice krispie turkeys every Thanksgiving.  It never goes according to plan.  There are always casualties...and blood, so much candy coated blood.

This year two days before Thanksgiving, at precisely the exact moment I was going to make krispie turkeys, I realized I had everything except candy corns.  No worries, I had lots of errand to run, surely one of my stops would have candy corn.  No such luck, but my last stop was near a Piggly Wiggly, which for those of you outside the Midwest is the actual name of a grocery store chain.  Not even lying. 

Anyway, I thought I had struck out there too.  I was on my way out when I saw a fairly deserted "seasonal" shelf and there was candy corn.  Not real candy corn mind you.  That's to say not Brach's candy corn.  Yes, I live with candy corn snobs.  That's a real thing too.  But it's still candy corn and they probably wouldn't notice. I knew that was a lie as soon as the thought entered my head, but if I embraced it I could finally go home.  Next to the candy corn was mixed candy corn.  There was the traditional orange, yellow and white, but there was also ones with some brown and others with red.  I knew in my heart my turkey connoisseurs won't be fooled by the store brand candy corn anyway so I might as well go for broke and have colorfully feathered turkeys.

Lets just say I will not be buying Piggly Wiggly candy corn again.  The traditional ones flavor wise were suitable.  The brown, yellow and white ones had sort of a caramel flavor that was acceptable.  I don't what flavor I expected the red ones to be, but cherry never crossed my mind.  It was wrong.  Sticking them into rice krispie balls would have been nothing sort of criminal.  The worst part was how soft they all were, fine for eating, if you're into that sort of thing, but not for poking into krispie balls. I had a lot of points smush and some corns even split right down the middle.  I ended up poking holes into the krispie balls with the tip of a potato peeler and then pressing the candy corns in.

No matter what there are always some candy corns that won't stay put. I've learned to embrace this phenomenon buying gluing them in with red candy melts.  Some of the bloodied turkeys get to be team Zombie and the rest are team Victims.  The poor schmucks below don't have a clue to what's going on, but ignorance won't save them.  In the end they all get eaten, even the zombies.

I used last year's recipe and at least one person described them as being akin to biting into Heaven. Your mileage may vary.

 

Hiss & Hearse Bottles

And the obsession with altered bottles continues...

I really just wanted an excuse to try different textures, so I made a couple of simple labels.  Images are courtesy of the Graphics Fairy.  Font is Carnivalee Freakshow by Livin Hell.

I was inspired by another Russian bottle. I love the way the bottle has it's own persona.  I hope I've been able to create that with this lovely couple.  I can't decide if they are dressed for a courting stroll among the tombstones, maybe fancy dress for a mourning party or perhaps the dirge of nuptial bells signals wedding attire.

Both are plastic bottles that I didn't even bother to remove the original labels from. I just Mod Podged a layer of tissue over them. Yet another thing to love about this style of bottle.

From top to bottom: Hiss is a wearing a cork & bottle cap hat inspired by a skeleton at this year's craft party.  The bottle cap didn't make quite a wide enough brim, so I flattened it a bit with a hammer.  Then the brim wasn't tall enough so I lengthened it with tinfoil.  It's a beautiful thing all the flaws that can be concealed with a coat of paint. The brim is adorned with a little plastic bat that I bought on clearance years, and I mean years ago and I finally used it! A piece of elastic cut from a cheap plastic mask gave nice lines as a hatband.  Have I mentioned you can use anything on these bottles? The middle of the bottle is textured with eggshells and there are a few smidges of cheesecloth to complete his ensemble.

Using eggshells is one of those techniques I've been dying to try.  There are a lot of different ways to lay out the shells. You can break them into small pieces and individually place each piece.  You can lay out large pieces and press them flat, creating many tiny cracks. This looks especially cool with alcohol inks which get into the fine cracks.

I went with the method were you place large pieces of eggshell on a layer of glue and then split them into smaller pieces with a toothpick.  You can use your fingers but I think the toothpick gives you better control and it can also be used to space out the pieces as you go.  It's kind of fussy, but it looks cool.  I would not have the patience to do a large surface this way, but doing a section of this small bottle went quickly.

The hardest part was cleaning the shells, specifically the thin membrane attached to the shell.  I used raw eggs so I don't know how hard-boiled might differ.  I rinsed the shells with hot water.  By grabbing a broken edge you can peel a fair amount of the membrane off.  Anything that remains will easily rub off.  I know it doesn't sound hard. The problem is without the membrane the shell becomes very fragile, so you have to very gently rub off the remaining bits if you want large pieces to work with.  You can't skimp on this step.  If the membrane is still on when you break the large pieces into place it will be impossible to space out the smaller pieces unless you cut that membrane.  The good news is gets easier with practice to clean the shells.

Eggshells open up a whole other avenue of crafting using paints, dyes, alcohol inks, decoupage and I'm sure many more techniques that I haven't seen yet. I have a smattering of cool Halloween napkins that I picked up with decoupage in mind, so you'll probably see me do this sooner or later, but for this I just painted the whole bottle with acrylics.

On the subject of eggshells, while researching techniques I fell in love with two mosaics by Linda Biggers.  One being this murder of crows  and the other this gorgeous, yet spooky tree.

From top to bottom: Hearse has on an acrylic gem, which just happened to set nicely on a large eyelet. You can't see it, but a circle of braided cord covers the eyelet.  She's wearing black netting that used to be a bag containing plastic bugs.  Over that is a layer of lace.  I think I would have preferred the look of a more delicate lace, but I'm not frilly or fancy so this is the only lace I had in my stash to work with.  Now that I'm looking at her, I think maybe she needs some pearls.

That's two more bottles down and 53,716 more to go (give or take a few).

Altered Potion Bottles

I'm obsessed with altered bottles.  I blame the Russians.  I got sucked in by their pinterest Postila.ru which led me to Stranamasterov.ru  According to Google Translate it is:  Country of Masters - a site about applied creativity for children and adults: crafts from various materials with their own hands, master classes, competitions.

The variations of bottles is endless and I want to make all the bottles with everything.  As I mentioned in my craft party post you can use anything to decorate these bottles, the hardest part is choosing what. Before the party my daughter and I each created a bottle using different items and techniques to use as examples.

The bottle above is my daughters creation. She worked too fast for me to get before and after pictures.  She started with a layer of Mod Podge and tissue paper.  Our city recycling program can't accept tissue paper, so I always save it for projects like this.  She chose to hot glue her items on.  She used twine, beaded garland, and broken jewelry; bit of chain, charms and links.  There are faux pearls, some wavy bits that are pieces of shell and of course smaller whole shells.  There is a bit of mesh packing paper, which has some neat texture. She used fabrics and even some vinyl from a repair kit which also had some interesting textures. Most items where attached before painting, but you can see some were added after for a pop of color.

I had seen bottles like this using dried plants and was curious to see how that would actually work.  I also wasn't sure what medium they were using to set the plants into.  After reading through a few translated how-to's I decided to go with a mixture of Elmer's white glue and spackle.  I added a little glue at a time until the spackle was the consistency I wanted.

First I started with a layer of Mod Podged tissue paper to give the spackle mixture a better surface to cling to.  After the tissue paper was dry I added a rough layer of the spackle gunk with a tongue depressor  and started pressing things into it.  I used twine, dried ornamental grass, wood beads and the seeds my hamster doesn't like from her treat mix.  Towards the end I stuck on a glass gem with a skull picture from the previous craft party to try and show how those could be incorporated too.  It doesn't really work here, and looks every bit the last minute add-on that it is, but it's still a valid idea.  Next time I would  make the gem the focal and work the design around that.  I would also build up the medium more around the gem.

I love how a sloppy application of spackle adds interest to the surface of the bottle.  Being able to set things into it makes them part of the bottle as opposed to merely laying on top. The downside is the longer drying time.  I let my dry overnight before painting.  Gluing items worked better for the craft party, but if you have the time, the spackle method is certainly rewarding.

Homicidal Maniac Meets The Last of the Zucchini

Ding dong the vine is dead! I am plagued by zucchini no more, (five metric tons of shredded zucchini in freezer conveniently forgotten.) The remaining survivors have been sliced, stabbed, poked and gutted.  Their tiny little heads on display as a warning to other squash, summer or otherwise.

I remembered I had pumpkin carving tools and while I tend to snap those flimsy little saw blades on real pumpkins, they are quite perfect for the soft flesh of the zucchini. 

From left to right: Plastic Eyeball Zucchini (because original carved eye looked like crap), Held Together By Toothpicks Zucchini (because froze and cracked on vine and then was dropped on the way outside after carving),  Fires of Hell Zucchini (sadly not fires of hell, just a red tea light), Pomegranate Aril Iris Bug Eating Zucchini (just because), and last Broken Pasta Teeth Zucchini (because there was no way I was going to successfully carve that itty bitty zucchini, and I got lazy).

It's hard to believe that isn't really hell fire and just a mere tea light. Scratching the surface of the zucchini with the saw blade gave some nice texture.  

And just because I love my daughters mini pumpkin
and it's evil grin in the faux hellfire glow.  

Also I discovered too late there is a
National Sneak Some Zucchini onto Your Neighbor’s Porch Day

If I ever get zucchini amnesia and plant another one,

I want to hang with these ladies on zucchini day. 

Easy Way To Remove Labels From Plastic

I have been saving this jar forever.  The kids talked one of their grandmothers into buying cheeseballs and apparently cheeseballs only come in these insanely huge plastic barrels.  I have no desire to acquire another insanely huge plastic barrel full of cheeseballs.  Although I can imagine presenting a large barrel of cheeseballs to Trick or Treaters and telling them to grab a handful.  I can also imagine trying to clean raw egg off the side of my house later.  So I've been hanging on to this one all this time, since besides having the capacity to hold an ungodly amount of cheeseballs, it could also easily fit a human head or a small carcass.   

Now back when I was a kid, we had reasonable sized containers of cheeseballs. If you're wondering whatever happened to Planters Cheez Balls, you are not alone.  

The reason I've been dragging my feet about using this container was the big label.  I really dislike removing labels from plastic, they generally refuse to nicely peel off.  Glass containers are so wonderful by comparison.  Soak in a little hot water, peel off label, razor blade any remnants off, use a little oil (I like coconut oil, it makes my hands soft) on the remaining glue residue. 

On the other hand unless you have magical powers you aren't going to be able to razor blade plastic without scratching it.  Some plastic containers can't even handle a hot water soak without warping.   Even if they can take the heat, usually only the top layer of the label comes off  leaving behind all the adhesive still stuck to the bottle.  I think Goo Gone takes less elbow grease than natural oils when working with plastic, but I hate working with that stuff it's pretty harsh.  

Well I had an epiphany last week. This is not the quickest process, but very little effort is needed. I'm sure instead of letting things sit overnight, a few hours would do.  It was just convenient to do right before going to bed.  I soaked a rag in hot water and placed it over the label and let it sit overnight.  The next day I rubbed that top layer of label off and rubbed oil into the remaining adhesive.  Then I let that soak in overnight.  I rubbed off that remaining layer.  I used a little more oil to get any last bit of adhesive off and then wiped it down real good and cleaned it up with water and vinegar. 

Even though it took a couple of days, I spent very little time physically removing the label.  This was so simple I could kick myself for not thinking of it sooner.  I have used the same method since with some smaller containers I was avoiding and it works like a charm every time.  I fear plastic bottles no more.