Nefarious News: Grandin Road’s Halloween Haven 2017 Release

I’m certain everyone here has assumed I’m dead. I’m happy to report I am not… If I am, I’m blissfully unaware and can vouch  that the afterlife is identical to waking life!

I sure have missed Vespertine House and talking to all of my “House Mates” here! I’m pushing myself to get back to casual writing as I’m hoping to incorporate more creative writing into my schedule as well.

Lots of verbiage on my plate.

And I like it. 🙂

In more important news! Today was a truly amazing day as Grandin Road released their 2017 Halloween Haven collection! I got the email and spent the whole day filling my cart and lurking every single item in their range of new decor.

This year the theme is a cross between “The Faces of Halloween” and “Cirque”. There were a lot of stunning circus/carnival themed items. Many are a lovely little nod to the classic sideshow acts of days of yore. Or you know.. the stuff you see at the super shady carnival that rolls through town on a whim. Either way! Bring on the entertainment, baby!

Grandin Road is known for beautiful home decor and offers stylish and unique options for decorating your favorite rooms in the house. They’re a little bit on the pricey side but, girl, they have a store card and, and, and that… that… makes it okay… right?

Moving on! The following are some of my favorite items that are absolute MUST-HAVES for your haunted home this season!

Victorian Busts

So, last year I made my first purchase with Grandin Road and bought the set of masquerade masks complete with pedestals for year-round enjoyment. I wasn’t expecting much really as I figured they would be run-of-the-mill items that would just be a good addition to my ahem, interesting home decor.

Girl.

I was wrong.

These masks were jaw-dropping. They not only sit around two feet high, but the quality is high enough that I feel like I might get in trouble with some parental figure every time I touch them!

I want to say that the Victorian Busts are probably this year’s version of the masks in the sense that they’re best purchased as a pair even though you buy them separately.

This suffices to say that I think these are so adorable and just creepy enough to keep me interested without feeling uncomfortable when making inadvertent eye contact in passing.

Margaret and Willem are made of sculpted resin and feature intricate details including the fanciest of ribbons ever to be fathomed by man and soft woolen hair.

Talk about blueblood…

Each bust is $79 which may pop your wallet a little, but snatching up something like this would be a 365 investment (aka decor you can display all year round)!

The Skellierina

I have a love for music boxes, add a little goth and you’ve got my new favorite thing.

Admittedly, when I saw this particular item I let out an audible “Ooooh…” and proceeded to gawk before adding it to my cart.

This Skellierina (get it?!) music box is a subtle nod to this year’s Cirque theme that stays true to the classiness of Grandin Road’s finer Halloween Haven decor. Skellierina rotates atop her black pedestal as green lights emanate from beneath her. According to the description, she plays music and is activated with the poke of a button. Which song she plays and how long she plays for is a mystery that only her new owners can solve!

She’ll set you back just a few bucks at $29. Again, this is another item you can keep around the entire year. What better way to commemorate Halloween all 12 months than with a little “tribute to thee” perched upon your mantle?

“Palm Reader” Neon Sign

As someone who’s into everything obscure and strange, it goes without saying that this particular item would be a staple for my haunt this year.

The “Palm Reader” Neon Sign gives off that mysterious back-alley-psychic vibe.

You know… Like the gypsy shop that our hapless protagonist stumbles into from the rain one dark night only to have his fate change forever!

…Or at least until the second movie comes out.

This little beauty screams “come hither” to all your neighbors and will guarantee you the most mystical house on the block.

Pick this up for $79 and call it a day with your decorating this year. Although… you might want to put a few more decor items out just so you don’t get any desperados knocking on your door after hours asking for advice.

Unless you’re into that sort of thing…

If so, I just helped you found your new Psychic Consulting business and on a budget too!

You’re welcome.

Animated Haunted Movie Projector

Every year I watch for the game-changing items debuting this season. I have to say that I was so impressed by this little guy…

The Animated Movie Projector is one of the more unique items I’ve seen in recent years. This animated projector’s reels roll as it projects an eerie vintage scene of a skeleton dancing to The Entertainer.

Girl.

I can get behind this.

I have yet to see this one in action which makes me a tiny bit hesitant to purchase on release day. I reached out to Grandin Road on Facebook about seeing a product video of this only to find that they currently don’t have that available. I’m hopeful it’ll be added shortly, but if not, I can’t feel too terrible about this prop as it costs a mild $39.

For a truly unique item that brings in a little vintage, whimsy, and horror, definitely pick this up!

 

Six Arm Lady Shadow Box

This is the final item on my list and maybe my favorite.

This goes back to the whole vintage cirque thing Grandin Road is running with this year. And this displays it in a perfectly macabre way!

The Six Arm Lady Shadow Box displays a beautiful dancing shadow of a Medusaesque figure gently swaying her six arms up and down. This animatronic is downright hypnotic! Grandin Road thankfully added a product video of this item that I love more and more every time I watch it.

If you’re not sold with the projector as a unique Halloween prop, then this one might be the final nail in the coffin for you instead.

This old girl is a bit pricey, and is the most costly item on this list at $149. Fortunately, we can reference the whole store credit card thing again and justify it entirely because… Halloween. 🙂

Every item here counts as everyday decor… at least for yours truly.

Probably why I have no visitors.

Don’t be fooled- this is not the entirety of Grandin Road’s Halloween collection, there are numerous items that I loved and left out. I wanted to share my must-haves and grab your attention enough for you to at least browse their collection. If anything, you’ll be struck with inspiration to create your own little Halloween haven. 🙂

So, spill your guts- what did you think of these items? Which were your faves and which were the knaves? I want to know. I miss you. 🙂

-Sarah

Sweet Spooks: ‘The Purge’ SFX Tutorial Success

I have been wanting to delve into my makeup all week, but was just a bit too busy.

But last night! Last night was another story!☺️😏

I got home, crashed, woke up, made two pumpkin cookie cakes for my parents and my sister, and a big batch of sugar cookies that I decorated for a friend I’ll be seeing tomorrow. ☺️ 

I do so love baking.💜🎃💜

  
So! After that, I sat and watched Halloweentown with Frankenstein.🐶💜 he loves that movie! ☺️

I decided that the night was young and I could manage to try a makeup before bed!😀🎉

Now, I went with an all makeup, zero practical effects, paint because I really truly want to improve my makeup and body paint skills. Right now I have zero in that department lol!😂 but, I’m making an effort to try from now on. 😌

Makeup blogger and overall awesome girl, MadeYewLook, has some of the most amazing body paint tutorials ever! 💜 She’s my body paint fave, the way Glam and Gore is my SFX fave.💜☺️

I decided to try her Purge mask makeup tutorial because it didn’t seem that difficult…

Holy shit bombs was I wrong, but the payoff was great😏🔪…

  

 
For an extremely intricate makeup that involved a lot of light-play, I think I did okay! I was shocked it came out remotely alright lol😂 

I seriously had to go through the process twice because everything just looked so muddled the first time. 😔 I tried to follow her steps to a tee, but they just weren’t applicable for what I was working with. 😒

I ended up kinda using my own freestyle method on the eyes to get the same effect she had in the end, and also used a darker rose colored lipstick with a light brown blush dusted on top to make the lips pop. ☺️

  
In the end, it looked fucking crazy lol but in a good way! 😆🎉🔪🎃I could definitely improve, and having a proper array of body paints and colors would most definitely help. ☺️👍🏻

I’ll need to have like a Go Fund Me or something to pay for that business. 😂☺️💜

All in all, pretty neat, yeah? 😀 Share your thoughts because I love you and love it when we talk! 💜

Til then… Let me purge? 🔪😀🔪

  

  
 
💜🎃💜

–Sarah

Halloween Haunting 101: Prop Building for Beginners

I’ve been swamped (as mentioned in my last post), currently I’m sitting here watching Night Gallery, covered in paint and black dye. 😔

Tired.😴

The last few weeks have been spent working on my first attempts at prop building! 🎃🎉

I was really dead set on finally getting around to trying my hand at making my own spooky decor as I’ve always wanted to, and experience in prop building could prove useful in the future if I finally decide to pursue my dream of owning my own Haunted Attraction. ☺️😌💜

Fun Fact: My lifelong dream/goal is to open my own Haunted Theme park. There’d be haunted houses, cute Halloween villages, kiosks selling candy apples and pumpkin flavored everything, sfx artists doing face mangling, bars, and nightly shows, and parades! Think Disneyland but scary/horror/Halloween all year long!💜🎃💜

I feel as though this first attempt has been fairly successful! 

I carved out these stones in insulation foam and painted them with Rit Black Dye and light touches of grey spray paint. ☺️

   
    
 Overall, they weren’t too difficult, just time consuming. I also learned a lot about the properties of Rit Dye 😂 but, in the end I think it was worth it! 😌

I had remnants so I tried my hand at a tabletop Guillotine for our little visitors Halloween night! 😂🎃💜

  
I also decided to try making a few static standup props. 

  

These were harder as I had trouble stuffing and securing the clothes to the PVC frames. I feel like they would have been way better if I had longer fabric to work with and some Monster Mud to cover them. 😔 in the end, working with what I had and bought on the cheap seemed to still be effective! ☺️👍🏻

   
   
So! What’d you think? Which of these is your favorite? Tips? Ideas for this stuff? I’d love to hear! 💜

💜🎃💜

-Sarah 

After Midnight No. 3

I got home really late and it was storming pretty hard early this morning. It was lovely weather… If you’re not trapped in it. ☺️

I know this is coming a bit late but I just slithered into bed (6.36AM) and thought I’d share my latest attempt at nail art.

I spent the evening playing MKX and catching up on MTV’s Scream. So far I really dig the series but I’ll admit the first two or three episodes are kind of slow moving. Things start to get really interesting after that. I’m excited to see what happens on the next new epi. ☺️🔪

So, with that in mind, I had scream on the brain and decided to attempt to scream-ify my nails.

Please note: I’m not an artist and it’s ridiculously difficult to paint tiny things on fingernails. All in all, I was pretty proud of my Scream Manicure. 😀👏🏻👏🏻

Aside from that, I think I’m going to curl up for some sleep now. 😴

How was your night? What did you do? And what horror themes would you love to have donning your nails?

💜🎃💜

-Sarah

Eye Yum: The Deadly Desserts by Aaron Crawford

I follow the lovely clothing and accessory brand Cavity Colors on Instagram because everything they share lights up my life.

The brand is pretty well known for their boisterous original horror-inspired products. Amongst the tees, tanks and stickers, they also sell art prints of some of their gorgeous designs.

Aaron Crawford, one of Cavity Colors’ main masterminds, released an adorable collection called The Deadly Desserts and I honestly couldn’t adore them anymore. I discovered the brand and collection after someone re-gramed the IScream art. Scream being my favorite horror franchise ever, my eyes grew wide and my heart fluttered a little at the sight of the ice cream inspired horror art. ☺️💙

I thought I’d go ahead and share a few of my favorites from this great collection.

And YES, these are all available for sale on the Cavity Colors site and you need them plastered on your walls NOW!

Awesomely created by Aaron Crawford at Cavity Colors.

Whatcha think? Which is your favorite and where would you hang these?

💜🎃💜

-Sarah