GrimQuiet’s Vintage Halloween Skeleton Trick or Treater

Last week, I posted about GrimQuiet's incredible new collection of 10" handmade Vintage Trick or Treaters. Four folk art-inspired figures, all with grotesque faces, unique, drab, and tattered costumes, and each with a wonderful pumpkin pail. Every character a feast for the eyes.

And, like most of Eric's cool offerings, these figures sold out in roughly four minutes...

But somehow I managed to grab this absolutely amazing Skeleton Trick or Treater! As soon as I saw the preview images, I knew this was the one that was going into my collection.

The twisted skull face and creepy pumpkin pail are fantastic, but the absolutely awesome skeleton costume really set this one apart. The worn, vintage costume looks like something straight out of the 1930s. So well done, all around. This one has taken its rightful place in the heart of my creepy collection.

  

Grimquiet's Vintage Trick Or Treater Figures

Okay, one more post before the big party because this is just too good not to share! As I look at my watch, it's currently 3:00 pm EST and there are just 2 short hours before these absolutely incredible figures go live.

Eric has REALLY done an exceptional job on these handmade vintage trick or treater figures. He perfectly nails the disfigured creepiness of each sculpt, and then completes each with a drab, tattered costume and twisted pumpkin pail. So much unsettling folk art moodiness and simplicity in each piece...

The Witch

The Ghost

The Skeleton

The Clown

These pieces go on sale at 5:00 pm EST TODAY over at the Grimquiet Bigcartel page. Get there quick, because these WILL sell out!

Good luck (but please save a Skeleton figure for me)!

  

"Monsters In Therapy" Series by Iain Burke

Here's a cool little retro-inspired screenprint series that I found while perusing Etsy. Monsters In Therapy by Iain Burke of Mummy's Hand perfectly encapsulates that tiny dark corner of self doubt that sometimes boils up in each of us.

And yes, even spooky monsters aren't immune to it, as each character questions themselves in a unique and truly humorous way.

I really love the 60's old-school monster illustration style of the entire series, paired with bold blocks of color and cool typography. Simple, spooky fun! Enjoy!

Check out the full 13-print series over at the Mummy's Hand Etsy shop!

  

Myles Garrett, Home Haunter

Here's a story that is blowing up around Cleveland tonight: Myles Garrett, defensive beast of our beloved Cleveland Browns, is a home haunter!

Images have been released showing Garrett's front yard now complete with 12-foot Skeleton and 12-foot Inferno Pumpkin Skeleton flanking custom-made tombstones featuring the names of some of the quarterbacks he has faced (and destroyed) this season.

Photos courtesy of cleveland.com

Garrett lives a mere 20 minutes away from the Cemetery, but it is known that he does not like visitors invading his privacy. And one look at Garrett's size and ferocity on the field should tell you to heed the warnings. So we will continue to admire our fellow home haunter's work from afar.

Make him mad. I dare you.

Happy Halloween, Myles!! Now bring the Orange & Brown a Super Bowl win!

 

100 Days

100 days until the big night! It's time to kick things into overdrive in anticipation of Halloween night. We're getting ever so closer...

Are you ready?

  

The Skeleton

That feeling you get when your four-year-old son comes home from daycare and shows you the skeleton he drew for you...

 

Le Cadavre de Vodoun

The next completed prop to shamble out of the garage is my new, voodoo-inspired piece, Le Cadavre de Vodoun. The Voodoo Corpse has been prepped to meet with Baron Samedi, voodoo ruler of the graveyard, and be escorted to the underworld beyond the living...

The first piece that I started with was the coffin that would contain the corpse. I went straight from ScareFX's great tutorial on their $25 Full-Size Toe Pincher Coffin. I constructed the entire thing in a weekend and the detailed how-to was easy to follow. I ended up making a few minor edits to the measurements, as the cedar fence panels that I used may have been slightly thinner than the ones that were used for the tutorial. Also, the materials were slightly more than $25 at the local Home Depot. I decided that I liked the look of the wood as it was, so I didn't do any aging of any kind once it was built. I will be placing the finished piece in a dimly lit room, so the brightness of the bare wood would pop more in the low light...

Once the coffin was complete, it was time to turn to its inhabitant. I used a Costco skeleton and started corpsing it using a great how-to from Allen Hopps at Stiltbeast Studios. I used a .7 mil drop cloth wrapped loosely around the body, limbs and skull, and then went over it all with a heat gun. The heat worked great, as it caused the plastic to melt and seal itself onto the skeleton form. A few layers of plastic and it looked like a semi-transparent flesh. This technique is really fast and really easy...

Once the plastic corpsing was done, I simply coated everything with some wood stain, making sure to wipe off the raised areas with a rag. If you're going to try this technique, please wear rubber gloves as you probably don't want to stain your fingers Deep Walnut or any other dark wood color.

The stain took about 48 hours to dry completely, and once it dried, I went about adding the voodoo elements. I started with a quick necklace made of small skulls. The skulls came from Pat Catan's and cost about $5 for two small bags. I then added a skeleton key necklace (the corpse will use the key to unlock the gate to the underworld), using an old skeleton key that I had found in my grandfather's garage earlier this summer. The final touch was to add a faded skull face paint to the corpse's actual face. I added a red cross on the forehead and he was ready to be entombed. I placed him into the coffin and added some cobwebbing...

I'm REALLY happy with the way the dried flesh turned out. It's semi-transparent so that you can see some of the bones, yet still looks like it has been dried out over the years. Once the entire prop was together, the only thing left to do was get it into the correct lighting along with a few more accent pieces for some night shots. The complete piece below will be taking center stage of my voodoo crypt room on Halloween night. I can't wait!

Costco Skeletons

The new hot commodity among home haunters? 60-inch Pose-N-Stay Skeletons from Costco!

This season's batch is starting to make its way to Costcos across the country and if you're in the market for one (or more as I've seen people buying them 10 at a time), I highly suggest you get to your local store and get one quick because they are flying off the shelves. They go for around $40 each, but are of good quality and realism.

A big thank you to ActionJax for the "friend-of-a-friend" Costco member hookup. I scored three and I'm already planning their roles in this year's cemetery yard haunt.

Highbury Cemetery, 2012

Five straight days of rain, huge time commitments at work, a last-minute weather-related rescheduling and taking care of our newborn son. Even through all of that, we still managed to pull it off. Somehow we all got together and managed to get through another incredible Halloween season. Saturday's rescheduled neighborhood trick-or-treat left many questions as we set up a scaled-down version of our haunt through some light morning rains. Would the weather ever break? Would anybody show up? Would anybody think a scaled back version of Highbury Cemetery would still be cool??

In reflecting on last night's mayhem, I can happily answer "yes" to all of the above! The skies cleared up and allowed us to run all of our lighting. We still had over 100 trick-or-treaters, neighbors and curious onlookers stop by. And we had many compliments and photo requests throughout the night.

After all of the stress of trying to get everything set up and organized, 2012 goes down in the books as another successful year for the Highbury family.

So without further ado, I present Highbury Cemetery, 2012:

A big, big thank you goes out, as always, to everyone who helped set up, scare, and then tear down this year. You all earned your shirts this year! The Golden Zombie awards go out to Sharon, Karen, Scrapes, Andrew and Neighbor Joe for helping making this year so much fun. We couldn't do it without you! 

And of course a big thanks to everyone who cooperated with the trick-or-treat reschedule and made it out to visit us. We enjoyed serving you. And especially the kids that I got to chase all the way down the street. You guys really make trick-or-treat fun!

But a special Platinum Zombie award goes out to Mrs. Highbury, who couldn't help out this year, as she had her hands full with one very special little skeleton:

I can't wait until he's old enough to become one of the members of Highbury Cemetery. I'd say he's already got the look down!