Antique Halloween Accordion-Style Crepe Paper Lantern (date unknown)

Approximately 22 inches open.

This is a Really Epic Halloween Idea!

It took me a moment to figure out what this person was saying when he or she presented this painting online.

Apparently, he or she finds 19th century portrait paintings and then touches them up (repaints them) to convert them into Halloween-appropriate tableaux.

I didn't want to just briefly excerpt the person's explanation of process, so here is the whole thing...

"Totally unique antique ca. 1888 original antique oil painting, using the old canvas and creating a Halloween Devil.

This is the ultimate piece for a Halloween collector. Last year I sold Zelda the Witch, a companion antique painting to this one, the subject matter was a fantastic old witch. She was sold and is going to be exhibited in a wonderful store in California this Halloween as the Halloween window display.

This is a giant antique portrait, a real canvas painted in the year 1888, it is aged and torn, with a magnificent old frame with just the right amount of gesso missing to make it perfect for Halloween. It looks like it came out of a creaky old mansion.

It takes a long time to design, create, and paint, and alot of travel and searching to find just the right canvas and frame to create one of these paintings, and I will only be doing one a year, and only at Halloween.

This piece is for the serious collector, someone that wants a true antique, that is actually period and has been transformed into a wonderful devil, I call him Lucifer "Beelzebub" Ludwick.

This is a giant canvas in a large gold gilt frame measuring approximately 32"x42", measuring the outside edges of the frame. Original poem created for the painting below in red lettering.



The Halloween Devil ~ Lucifer "Beelzebub" Ludwick

Lucifer Ludwick is the devil, tis true

his penchant for troublemaking might surprise even you


A subterranean force, (purely wicked) will labor for hours

concocting mischief and evil causing good things to sour


His fiery flames travel with him

making it uncomfortably warm

and that large whipping tail can be worse than his horns!!


The devil’s fork that he carries does pose quite a threat

for blood will course out of wounds

that the 3 prongs have met


The vampire bats hover closely hoping for a fresh meal

a small amount of hemoglobin is all they need to steal!


Lucifer dressed up and posed for this portrait

(the year was 1888)

don’t be fooled by his dapper appearance though

for your soul he will take!


Delightful anachronisms!

Black Cat "Compo" Wood Noise-Maker (Germany, circa 1920s)

Measures approx 7" high x 5.5" across. Then the cat adds an additional 1 5/8.

Cat has become detached with the years.

Thorne's Toffee Tin, Halloween Theme (date unknown)

Dimensions unknown.

"Tiny."

I Can Has Cheezburger is Halloween-Friendly

I'm a total ICHC addict.

I often do Halloween-themed captions there (expect I will do more as that beloved Walpurgisnacht draws nigh).

Anyway, wanted to share this one, since it seems in keeping with the blog's theme.

If you click on it, it should take you to my homepage there.

I've made over 14,000 captioned LOLz there.

If you like the site feel free to join and get in on the fun.

It's absolutely free and the people (your "cheezfrends") are nice.

You'll quickly notice the cats are speaking a less-than-orthodox form of English known as lolspeak.

There's no right or wrong in lolspeak.

Or I should have written, "Therez no rite or rong in lolspeak."

"Misspellings are better than spellings" is a good general rule of thumb.

Black cats are often seen as representations (tongue-in-cheek, never cruelly!) as Satan (known as "Basement Cat" or "Baysement Cat" or...you get the idea) and White Cats are often equated with God, but known as "Ceiling Cat."

The struggle between "Gud" and "Ebel" goes on, and there is even a translation of the Bible into lolspeak underway. Imagine.

The site is enormous and enormously entertaining.

There are funny photos of people, animals and everything else. There's a subsite dedicated to edgy fashion and jewelry; there's a subsite of poorly translated "Engrish"; there's a subsite that's gorgeous or unusual homes and another that's gorgeous travel photographs (just added). And there's much more.

If you go to Memebase on this same site, you will find the source of most of those odd pictures that go everywhere across the internet.

Hope you join the fun!

If you do, feel free to add me as a friend...and tell me you found me through this blog!

Spooky House of Horror, Charles Fuge (Konemann, 1998)

I found this wonderful pop-up book in an upstairs room tonight.

I had been thrift-storing a lot in the past few years and now it's like going shopping when I enter the rooms where I stored up my secondhand (or fiftiethhand) booty!

I took some photos of some rooms of the haunted house which is this book. Apologies that these photos are not the best, but they give you some idea of the great eye and whimsy of the book's designer, Charles Fuge.

The book has two red ribbons you can tie off. When the book is closed up, these seem de trop.

But when you open the book, you soon realize there's a reason they're there; the book is a book "in the round." You open the book like a centerpiece decoration until the front cover and the back cover meet. Then you use those red ribbons to tie the covers tightly together so the floors of the various rooms will descend correctly.

Then you can poke around in this really delightful (and not too scary really--the target audience is clearly younger kids) haunted house.

There are well over a dozen interactive features. Pull this tab and a spooky chandelier descends. Pull that tab and a vampire (see photo) swiftly rises up from his coffin in one downstairs room.

I love the mutant bug kitchen!

You should see the horror in the oven when you open it. It looks like an ax murderer might have been cooking "his work."

There are trap doors and even a turnstile bookcase (Scooby Roo!!).

There's even a little piece of acetate that hangs down from one high ceiling and reflects a ghost, making him truly transparent (or a transparency lol?)

Of course, click on the pictures above to enlarge them and see these details.

The Moon Man all by himself in the one photo is up in a slot near the roof of the house.

He's actually a little flat book.

Inside I found paper cutout figures--one adult male (the author?) and one child (his son?)

The little book gives you a spooky narrative and some facts and pointers about the house.

It's an oversize book, of course, fifteen inches tall--the height of your haunted house.

It was printed by Konemann in Koln, Germany. In 1998.

I think it's really gorgeous, as pop-up books go.

Betty Boop Halloween Party Cartoon (1933, Banned)

Banned (believe it or not) because you can see her panties (at 3:10).

There are other banned Betty Boop cartoons on YouTube, some banned for drug use (I think laughing gas).

Betty Boop was just trouble, wasn't she?

Anyone that hot usually is.

I love Drawn Together's truly disgusting reincarnation of Betty Boop, Toot Braunstein.

Here's a taste of Toot's tastelessness (WARNING: non-censored!)