Vincent Price's Halloween Special
is a straight-up riot!
Bill Hader as Price
both ghoulishly overacts and
gets annoyed with the insane antics
of his celebrity guests.

Krisin Wiig is a brilliant imitator and brings Gloria Swanson back... to life!
John Hamm's James Mason is licentious and pickled to perfection...
And Fred Armisen as Liberace? You'll never feel so beguiled by the guile of one gay man.

Have A Happy Halloween,
and thanks for watching!

Welcome to my Halloween Special!
Tonight, prepare yourself for some
spooks and scares
as we have invited over
some of our most famous friends
for some tricks
and also some treats!

abi ghoul

The view from below my window

I tried a LED light stick in the plastic pumpkin
that lights it more evenly than the touch light.

Feeling spooked yet?

The witch cat wears its mystic ring,
The black bat spreads its gruesome wing
Hobgoblins weirdly chant and sing
'Tis Halloween.

abi ghoul

When I woke up obscenely early this morning, I turned on the light and started sketching.
I had a completely new idea about what I wanted to do for Trick Or Treating
less than two weeks away from the big day - Yikes!

The trickiest project will be creating ~3 armatures out of lumber, PVC pipe, duct tape, chicken wire, bubblewrap etc.
as well as thrift store clothing for the "guests" to wear.

The rest will be carving pumpkins,
crafting paper decorations,
creating signs from cardboard,
putting together my spider props,
building a soundtrack playing to play over a sound system,
and lighting everything properly.

So, what is this new theme?

The PumpkinHead Gala:
A Halloween Masque.
When the Hostess Lost Her Head
So Did Her Guests.

I've only made one tissue paper "rosette" so far,
but I think I've got a handle on it:


Here Lies Lizzie Borden's Father.
And Here.
And Here.
And Here.

abi ghoul

Deep in my heart,
I know this will happen to my my unborn child.

"Oh my god, for the last time - He's not a squid!
He's Cthulu, Great Priest of the Old Ones!
What?!
WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DON'T KNOW WHO CTHULU IS?!?!"

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn
In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.
Cthulhu fhtagn.
Cthulu waits.

abi ghoul

 

I honestly thought I'd seen it all
when it came to cupcake spiders.

Shere Bear showed me just how wrong I was
with an email to this website:
not martha - spider cakes




Sugar eyeballs - ILU, all of you!


I love the texture the chopped up chocolate pieces create C:


My Favorite
Domed cupcake with those chocolate pocky legs?
Realistically delicious :d

Spiders crawl up the wall,
Cobwebs everywhere.
Dust and dirt are piled high
On every crypt and chair.

Bats go winging overhead,
Round and round the room,
Come, my dear, oh do come in
And join me in my tomb.

(Margaret Keyes and Jeanne Youngson)

abi ghoul

I've been pondering a long while about how to do my make-up for my witch costume.

At first, I thought I'd go with a standard, Margret Hamilton Witch of the West:
Green foundation, a long bumpy nose, warts and all

But then I bulked at the idea of green face paint staining my pretty orange ballgown.

I wondered, too, how ugly I wanted to take the witch character.
Make-up definitely helps me get into character,
but I still want young kids to feel only slightly-hesitant to approach me.

After watching The Addams Family a few weeks ago, I began thinking about
Vampira/Elvira/Morticia Addams dramatic "glampire" look:
White foundation, black eyeshadow, fake eyelashes, red lipstick, and red nails:



What you can't see in the Martha Stewart picture (center)

is a slight drip of red lipstick at the corner of her mouth.

That little bit of gore is something I'm going for this year - a general sense of foreboding.

I never really went in for the
LOOK MA BLOOD WAAAAAAAAH!

Mary, Mary, quite contrary
How does your garden grow?
Quite well I bet
Since it's well fed
By your body down below

abi ghoul

A favorite prop of mine is to have a groundbreaker - any prop (usually an undead human) that seems to be bursting forth from the ground.

In 2006 I saw this craft idea from the pages of Family Fun:

and I thought, what fun!

For my pirate theme, I recreated the groundbreaker as a diver in shark-infested waters:

The comedic effect it creates is worth its weight in doubloons!

Going through ExtremePumpkins.com, I was delighted to see this full-body groundbreaker:

Now all I need to figure out is how to incorporate this into a witch-theme...

Barry M. Deep

abi ghoul