What We Do in the Shadows

Sometimes it wouldn’t even occur to me to paint a particular set, no matter how into the movie/TV show I am, unless someone brings it up. It’s something that always baffles me but there we are. I am beyond grateful to Amy for wanting some What We Do in the Shadows dolls made, and not just a single set either, which means I get to fully immerse myself into the world of these vampires of Wellington for a few weeks. Best of all, I get to watch it again and again, and let me tell you, each viewing is a complete and utter treat.

After going through the movie carefully, I chose two of my favorite scenes featuring the vampires plus one with them wearing their “daily garb.”

The cast in these sets are the same but in different orders. There’s Viago, Vladislav, Deacon, Petyr, Anton, The Beast, and of course, Stu.

The Unholy Masquerade always cracks me up largely because it was held in a the most innocuous location possible: Victoria Bowling Club.

There are so many scenes I love (especially when Deacon was doing his dance for the others), but I loved the fact that they have all taken up artistic endeavors to while away their time, something that mere mortals tend to shy away from because our time on earth is so limited.

Well, this is the first time in a long while that I was sad to finish a project. At least I had fun painting it!

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Hocus Pocus

It’s the most wonderful time of year in the sweat shop! I usually start planning for my Halloween sets in late August and the hardest thing to do is to put it on a manageable schedule as these are the sort of things I can only paint after the day’s work is done. Fortunately, my husband is on one of his expeditions, leaving me to my own device. His function as a husband is to make sure I get enough food and rest and go out once in a while, but without him here to mother me, I’ve regressed to my art school days (minus the heavy partying) and painting late into the night. The advantage of living this way is that I get my best ideas after 2 AM and it is lovely to harness it and jot it down while alert instead of clumsily pawing at my nightstand for a pad of paper and fumbling for a pen.

For Halloween this year I’ve been tasked with painting one of my favorite all-time horror/comedy movies in the world. This request came right after I had made up my mind to paint another fun and somewhat kid-friendly “Hocus Pocus” so I had the rare treat of working on two Halloween-y sets simultaneously. The idea for “Hocus Pocus” came about largely because I was rooting through my collection of hair and discovered I have the right shade to make hair for Winifred Sanderson. Stop freaking out! When I say I have a box of hair, it’s doll’s hair!

I hadn’t planned on making an Easter Egg surprise for this set, but after reviewing the movie again, I thought it might be fun to toss the spell book into it. The spell book was executed at around 3 am one day and I had been on autopilot at that point so I don’t quite remember painting it, which is always a great surprise in the morning when I see it, or a sad one if it didn’t turn out right.

Happy Halloween!

I never have to think long and hard for my annual Halloween sets. The list is a mile long and growing. I am thrilled that I actually had the time this year to make this particular set, the main doll being the Cenobite from “Hellraiser.”

I sort of wanted this one to be more about the supernatural killers, but I can’t help lumping Captain Spaulding from “House of 1000 Corpses” in here. These ones are so much fun to paint. Maybe next year I’ll get around to painting an all-female killer cast…or even one featuring children! The possibilities are endless!

Happy Halloween!

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

Every year around this time I would have to screen “Beetlejuice.” Unlike most, I actually watched the Beetlejuice cartoon series first and found Beetlejuice and his relationship with Lydia kind of cute, albeit in that teen-girl-hanging-out-with-a-slightly-inappropriate-uncle sort of way in the animated series. But I get it. I had an older male baby-sitter, who, in retrospect, was really just a high school senior at the time, but he had a full beard and a luscious mullet and was slightly larger than average so I had always figured him to be in his 40s and he would often ride off into the sunset with my newly acquired dirt bike, vowing never to return, but then he would, armed with homemade cassette tapes of his drum solo. Looking back, he is really awesome and I was lucky to have him instead of someone from The Baby-sitters Club who would be all up in my business with coloring books and solving my 8-year-old problems for me. No thanks.

Anyway, I have done a Beetlejuice set a long time ago and always meant to update it, perhaps with Lydia in her red wedding gown. It didn’t happen this time, which means there’s always the next. I did do something fun with the Maitlands, though, and added Miss Argentina into the mix.

At this go, I have almost the right shade of green wool to make Beetlejuice’s hair, although it did have to be dirtied up slightly.

Making Lydia’s hair was fun although I would have preferred to make that enormous wide brimmed hat.

This version of Adam and Barbara Maitland made them seem a lot less vanilla and a lot more fun to paint!

Rosemary’s Baby

This is one of my all-time favorite horror movies: Rosemary’s Baby. It was filmed so that it’s basically a moving picture version of the novel by Ira Levin.

This set features Rosemary, Guy Woodhouse, and their creepy witchy neighbors Roman and Minnie Castevet. I pop this movie on whenever I feel a little homesick because I used to work across the street from The Dakota.

Manos: The Hands of Fate (Revisited)

I have so many projects sitting on the back burner that it’s threatening to topple over. Fortunately, there are always people out there somehow psychically linked to what I have in mind giving me a little push.

That said, one of those projects is to create a larger version of Manos: Hands of Fate, one of the most horrifically awful movies ever made. I’ve made the first one in a smaller size as a joke because I’d enjoyed watching the MST3K version so much. It was also a movie I showed to someone on a first date, which explains why I didn’t usually get a second date. In any case, the Manos sets were not something I can whip up in a day because of all the components that goes into it, namely the creation of the Master’s robe, so I never really gave the larger size a go.

Then I got a lovely email from one of the actresses from the movie: Jackey Neyman Jones, daughter of Tom Neyman, who played the Master. I knew from other Manos fans that she is making a sequel to Manos and also that her father had only recently passed away, which had upset me to a degree only a true Manos fan can understand. In short, I found her so delightful that I thought this was a sign, that I need to finally buckle down and create a large Manos set and she would be the first to receive it. Just to give me another kick in the pants, Jackey had sent me a copy of her book: “Growing Up with Manos” all the way to Australia!

Thanks, Jackey! I can’t wait to see the sequel!

Penny Dreadful

You wouldn’t believe how excited I was when I first heard “Penny Dreadful” was coming out. It had everything I loved: Old timey characters from my favorite classic horror tales such as the Werewolf, Dr. Frankenstein and his monster, Dorian Gray, Dracula, Jekyll and Hyde (although that character didn’t appear until the final season and was in fact a bit of a disappointment since he didn’t go through any physical changes), just to name a few. Every time the show introduced a new element such as the appearances of witches, voodoo dolls, Vanessa Ives’ stint in the Victorian asylum, an old Indian who became a werewolf…I would pee a little in my pants. No, but you know what I mean. I would watch this show on my own because I can be trusted to keep my inner horror nerd from going nuts around other people.

For someone who rarely got emotional watching movies (except ones with dogs in it), I found myself getting a bit teary eyed watching the last episode. In order to make this show last just a little bit longer, I worked on a “Penny Dreadful” set after I’m done with my after hours. Late night, me alone with my dolls…seems apt, doesn’t it?

This set features Vanessa Ives portrayed by one of my favorite actresses Eva Green, Sir Malcolm Murray, Ethan Chandler, who is also a werewolf, The Creature, whom I just wanted to give him a hug because he’s so sad and lonely, the immortal Dorian Gray, Lily Frankenstein, and of course, Dr. Frankenstein.

Itty bitty Dr. Frankenstein has a teeny weeny syringe!

Dreams Do Come True

Every now and then I get asked to paint a family portrait, a favorite project of mine. The thing is, being a bit on the shy side, I never dare to ask the buyers if I can paint their families in costume. I’ve done it once a long long time ago where the couple had asked me to paint them and their cats as pirates and that had been so much fun. But dreams do come true. Not only was the family I was asked to paint open to the idea of having them garbed in costumes, but in old horror movie monsters costumes! It’s a mash up of my two favorite things in the world!

Here we have the family dressed up as (Dad) The Werewolf, (Mom) Bride of Frankenstein with a real wig that I needle felted with glee, (Daughter #1) as the Dracula’s Daughter and (Daughter #2) as a Bat Baby. The family dog is a reflection of the only sane one in the lot, but if asked, I would’ve happily come up with something to put on her too!

Details:

What Fresh Hell is This?

I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough of summer TV programming and am ready for the fall lineup. The one show I’m most interested in (after American Horror Story), is Scream Queens. This is another version of the three Chanels in their finery. Instead of messing around with furs this time, I played around with sequins and glitter and came up with this:

Stranger Things

I was fortunate enough to take a few weeks off from painting this year. Didn’t do anything too exciting, just the usual visiting the family and baby-sitting my niece and nephew thing. I’ve never been one to treat children like children so I taught them the art of binge watching Netflix shows. We did nearly an entire season of “PeeWee’s Playhouse” in one sitting. It was a compromise because the kids refused to watch “Stranger Things” with me. They threatened me with tears. Then again, these are the same kids who were freaked out by Pan-Kun and James, the chimp and English bulldog team that went around Japan doing human tasks, so I had to table this highly anticipated show of the summer until they went home.

And boy, they don’t know what they’re missing! Even though I have many many sets to work on when I got back, I stole some time to paint the Stranger Things set…that is how obsessed I am with this show. Hey, once a fangirl, always a fangirl.

There’s Hopper, Joyce, Jonathan, Mike, Lucas, Dustin, and of course, Eleven.