Happy Christmas

From the Holiday Spider.

 And a very frozen Gargoyle.

The Winter Tree

I prefer to spend the week up to Christmas running around babbling about sugared elves and stuffing obese men up chimneys, all creativity taking a back seat in the buying season madness.
But this weekend I needed to paint. Collect my thoughts and emotions and others swirling around my brain and pin them down onto canvas.

So I created The Winter Tree:

It was an excuse to combine two things I enjoy painting, space and trees and then give it a winters edge so I'd have something to fit over the mantle when the skulls and ravens have to come down.

Which means this bad boy isn't for sale but you're in luck. I did decide to make prints.

 For a super fancy print there's either Fine Art.

Or, for something cheaper, Zazzle can do up some posters.

But wait, there's more. I did also paint a painting that can be sold. Paint! 

This is just a good old Blue Box zipping through the vastness of space. I've got it up in my Etsy store.

So that should be about...oh wait, one more thing.

Before you go, you should really tell the Elf on the Shelf if you've been a good little Hobbit or not.

Adipose on Tardis Sled

Hey! Hey! Hey! Didja look at the calendar? It's over. November is dead! Long live December!

I'm still a bit twitchy thesquarerootof906.01is, but I have over 95,000 words all on vaguely the same subject being orphaned at the moment.

The last two years I'd be limping to the end of my manuscript the final week in December but I already know I'm looking at another month before I finish this bad boy and then can properly ignore it. But because two months of intense writing will drive me hamster, I've taken a little creativity redirection break and over the weekend I created this guy.

He started simply enough, with me carving out chunks of clay and baking it, then repeating the same until I got a sled. How I form the adipose is a secret that I shall take to my grave *cough*lizardpeople.

Turning the sled into the Tardis was the harder part. It involved lots of teeny tiny painting and then waiting, then more painting, some cursing, a bit of drinking and then painting.

So this little guy is up for sale in my store for $30. Not bad for 4-5 hours of work.

And I only got some super glue on my fingers. That's a major triumph all on its own.

Happy Thanksgiving!

And what better way to celebrate than with a new Doctor Who Painting?

Sure sure, there's something about turkey and cranberries and thankfulness, but we all know it's about the Doctor showing up at your table exclaiming that the gravy boat is about to explode.

Speaking of adorable adipose, I have finally listed my second ornament this one is still up for sale:

To that I've added two new paintings as well. The first is a simple silhouette of a dogs head. Long story how I wound up with it, but it's going for super cheap because it was a case of measuring once and painting twice.

It's only $20. 

 

 The last is one I probably should have finished and listed back before Halloween, but uh people like skull forests for Christmas too. Right?

Happy Haunted Thanksgiving!

Some Posters for Week Three

Week Two is dead.

Long live Week Three!

Baring some sort of major catastrophe I should cross the 50,000 word threshold later today. But that's not important.

What I want to share are posters, free posters for anyone who needs something nerdy for some reason.

The first is for Thursdays.

And the second is for Doctor Who fans in this coming season:

Clicking on them should give you the full size if you want to do something unholy to them.

Week two, now you've done it.

Good Morning Campers?

Feeling refreshed? Excited? Like you could face the day head on and conquer whatever befalls your path?

Then you must not be doing NaNoWriMo because we just crossed into the windless doldrums that is week two.

While Week One is the excitement and joy of Christmas Morning as you tear off the wrapping around your brain and see what falls out onto paper. Week Two is the mind crushing boredom of having to watch The Christmas Story for the 75th time that day waiting for a dinner more substantial than all the sugar in the world while your Great Aunt places her feet upon your back as if you're some ottoman.

I think Week Three is the Boxing Day of Nano but with slightly less punches thrown.

Week Four is some kind of rabbit with a vendetta against squirrels. I haven't fully worked out my metaphors, but you get the gist.

Week Two:

If you just played that song three times, then you must be in deep, scrabbling to get even 400 words down in stone, or papyrus, or whatever crazy ass font you're trying now instead of actually writing.

So now I should be offering some kind of advice, or a pep talk, or perhaps a small mint to try and magically solve the problem I used Muppets to show?

Yeah, there's no cure. I'm sorry. Your novel only has three weeks to live.

But don't give up now. You don't want to leave your 12,000 words orphaned, forced to join with street gangs and adorably ask for more commas, Sir.

Batten down the hatches, shut out the rest of the world, enter into some disturbing sensory deprivation where it's just you, an internet-less laptop, and a jar.

You'll either come out with a novel or be dressed like a turn of the century peanut salesman. 60:40.

Happy Noveling!

Adipose Ornament

I was going to tell you all that, thanks to a bright sunny afternoon, a nice gain in word count, and getting the monster re-chained up in the background I was able to finally list my little Adipose ornament.

I say I was going to tell you but it's already sold. So hopefully the next one I make doesn't go as quickly.

Back to writing...*sigh*

How NOT to do NaNoWriMo

It's November 2nd, which means I have decided to go for the three-peat of losing about 30 days in the much maligned month of November in an insane quest to cobble together 50,000 or so words.

Plenty of people have advice on how to defeat the multi-headed monster that is NaNo. As for me, what I know best is how not to do things.

#1. Do not gouge your finger on a wooden fence when trying to hang a skeleton.

While staring down the gun of a blank page, you already find your brain raging against putting those fingers to the keys. Throw in a blind searing pain every time you want to put down an A and suddenly skipping this year and taking up snake milking sounds like a much more preferable hobby.

And on that note:

#2. Do not be into Halloween!

While most of my writing friends are spending Halloween both gorging on teeny Snickers and  counting down to midnight with research clasped to their bosoms, I am either hanging said skeletons, watching over said skeletons, or later taking down said skeletons.

I have pretty much resigned myself that I will be skipping the first day of every single NaNo I take on because hunting every single store for things I can corrupt for next years Halloween display trumps hammering out 1,600 words every time.

#3. Do not have a dog

Or cat, or bird, or pet rock, or a rather clingy toaster. Anything that you cannot drop in front of a video game will not understand why and that free time you once had to play is now trapped within the bitter love story of a man whose princess was turned into an elephant by a rather confusing gypsy curse.

Instead they will beg, plead, and then sigh loudly for how often you now spend your time blissfully ignoring them.

#4. Do not have interests outside of writing.

Last year it was Skyrim. This year it started with Baldur's Gate, then the Mass Effect announcements, then the Lego LOTR. I was guaranteed to have a billion different things I'd much rather do than struggle through the plot disaster where the gypsy finds herself married to a luchador. Never mind anything at the movie theater, parties, or ever seeing my family again.

And on top of it all, I've stupidly gotten into making Christmas ornaments and losing all of November for the christmas rush means I ain't getting a damn thing out the door.

#5. Don't do it!

Seriously, run. Just run. Stop looking at your blank page. Stop opening, that word doc. Drop your laptop and run!

Halloween 2012

All of the tombstones are packed away, the goblins chained back up, and the spiders hibernating. As comes with every years start of November here is another recap of all the shit we put in our yard.

This year there was a sort of theme. Thanks to a bag full of spider webs and me with even less sense than normal, we had a major spider takeover.

Happy Halloween!

We're crazy busy here trying to get everything set up but for now enjoy Essie frolicking in her costume.

Also, if you haven't already downloaded it, to celebrate All Hallows Read my book is free. FREE!

Free.

One More Sleep til Halloween

And we're getting busy here in Dungeon Introverted.

Against our normal plans of hording everything until the night of this year I decided to start putting some things out early in case I one again get sick on Halloween and have to force myself to set up.

But how's it look at night with my new blue light?

I also got up some of the skeletons and draped them in spider webs. I call this one my Orlesian.

To go with the decor I also took a fancier picture of my Tom Servo as a witch.

This weekend I also finished a skull tree painting.

And finally finished my Tentacle ornament

Finally, if you need a last minute costume idea for a baby why not dress her up as a companion cube.

Just click and save and then follow my old directions to make it.

Halloween Wars - Week Four

We made it. Past the corpulent clowns, the ravenous vampire bears and the Jeff Goldbulms hanging in subwy bathrooms. We're finally here, at the battle to end all battles once and for good.

Let the War begin!

Halloween Wars - Week 3

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the ocean beside the dreamy summertime camp..in space!

AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH*deep breath*HHHHHHHHHHHHH*checks watch*HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH*rolls hands*HHHhhhhhh...

First Painting for FatherWizard

After taking a pathetic fall onto frozen ground and completely fucking up my hand two weeks ago, I finally told the pain to piss off and buckled down to making a painting for the first donor to help FatherWizard.

She wanted something fallish, treeish, and off I went with this idea:

It was about 2 hours or so of making tiny lines slowly turn into a tree. Then some leaves, then some more tree again, then back to leaves.

I've already passed the donation on and should get this bad boy out soon (assuming this wet weather will stop).

If you like the tree above or want a challenge for me I'll still work with whatever you're wiling to donate to help him out. I've got lots of wacky ideas.

So if you want your own little (or big) tree painting/sketch/tattoo and to help out a wonderful man click the button below.

Halloween Wars - Week 2

Okay, *wipes blood off chin* we managed to make it past the giant Oompa Loompa with a butter fetish and the deep fryer, set aflame the shrieking harpy already doused in alcohol, and avoid the moaning pit of the damned ex-Food Network Star winners.

Only a few more feet and we should...

Shit!

If you don't think he just chopped off his own hand and is about to try it on the other, you haven't been paying attention.

That's right, it's time for this weeks edition of Halloween Wars - why does everything Food Network touch get destroyed?

Zombie Teeth

Last Night was our Halloween club's Monster dance. Much dancing and monstering was had by all.

I went as an ice mage, which involved a lot of white and blue makeup.

But I'm not here to talk about that.

My husband went as a Revenant. A sort of proto-zombie/vampire with a revenge fantasy.

I'd like to draw your attention to the teeth on the side of his face. I made that appliance in a day and with a few supplies you too can make your own creepy zombie teeth.

All you need is polymer clay, latex, kleenex, and acrylic paint.

First put down some tin foil and roll the clay about as flat as you can. Fold the clay over top itself, that nice fold makes for the perfect tooth edge. I cut off small chicklet sized pieces and used the pressure of my fingers to roll up the sides to make a tooth shape.

I also pressed down on the edge to super flatten it out to join each tooth together.

Bake that for 30 minutes at 250. Let it cool. Then I added a few coats of white and since these aren't supposed to be pristine teeth I added some tan and darker brown spots on the edges.

I finally finished with a glossy clear coat of acrylic for that creepy shiny teeth look.

Got your teeth painted a nice and creepy zombie shade?

Dredge a kleenex in the latex and put it down on the tin foil, to that add your teeth and position them.

Tear off another strip of kleenex and again put that through the latex, pucker and rip the sides up to create the torn skin. Wrinkles are actually fairly helpful so don't worry too much if it doesn't lay flat.

Let that all dry. If you want you can always go back later to add more layers of torn flesh.

Here I try out the unpainted and dry teeth.

As you can guess the final stag is painting. Carefully add some red and black to the torn muscle part and whatever flesh color you want it to be to the outside.

The night of, pull out a crap ton of spirit gum, flesh latex, and makeup to blend and you have zombie teeth!

Once you're done feasting upon the flesh of the dead, just pull it off and save for next year.

Iranian Beef Stew

I don't like stew.

It's chunks of parboiled beef floating in a flotsam of grains and lightly flavored water. Occasionally an old vegetable tries to claw its way out.

It's a hate/hate relationship.

So I'm coming to this Persian (if that makes you feel better) Stew recipe from a completely different angle. If like me, you're not wild about stew or want to try something different give this sucker a try.

The cool thing is that assuming you do a bit of baking and/or occasional Indian cooking you'll already have all the spices. Nothing's outside what you'd find in a regular grocery store but the combinations are deliciously exotic.

I found the recipe here.

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 2 medium onions, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 pounds lean beef, cut into 1-inch cubes
• 2 medium tomatoes, seeded and chopped (or a 14 ounce can of diced tomatoes)
• 1/3 cup fresh cilantro, chopped
• to taste, salt
• 2 cups beef broth
• 1 package (16 ounces) frozen cut green beans
• 2 tablespoons ground cumin
• 2 tablespoons freshly ground black pepper
• 1 tablespoon ground coriander
• 1 tablespoon ground cloves
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
• 1-1 1/2 teaspoons nutmeg (freshly ground)
• pinch of ground cinnamon

 It calls to mix together the cumin, pepper, coriander, cloves, cardamom, nutmeg and cinnamon and to only use 1 tablespoon in the pot. I wasn't certain if I was going to like this at all so rather than waste spices I cut everything down by an eighth.

Saute the onions and garlic in the oil until they're nice and fragrant and the onions do that onion thing.

Add the beef and brown it on all sides. This'll take around 5-7 minutes.

Dump in the tomatoes (I didn't bother draining the can because it's stew), cilantro (I also didn't add cilantro. I am neither for nor against the stuff, I just didn't have any), the spice mixture (1 tablespoon if you made the mix, a tiny amount of each if you didn't), and a bit of salt.

Mix all that together for about a minute.

Add the broth, bring to a boil and then let simmer for an hour and a half.

Add the green beans and then let it go another half hour.

Now you have Persian Beef Stew. I served it over rice which was a nice way to cut some of the spicy and also soak up the stewey goodness.

You may have noticed that your kitchen is rather fragrant as all the spices combined into one giant super spice (like Voltron). It will also make your hair smell delicious.

It isn't easy to explain just what this stew tastes like in English. We confuse spicy with hot. This isn't a throbbing drum beat to the tongue like peppers are. It's more like a cacophony, an orchestral hit to the tongue as all the spices fight together to be heard over the horde.

And that's what I love about it. It takes a little while to train the tongue to get used to the noise but once you do...oh Mamma!

Halloween Wars - Week 1

*cough cough*

I, I think I'm alive. Let me clear some of this dirt off my glasses. There. Did anyone else feel that spindly hand clutching at their leg before being wrenched down and down into this early grave?

No, just me?

Well, we best work our way out. I think I see a light up ahead and it's...

OH GOD NO! NOT AGAIN! RUN!

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into Halloween, Food Network is back to suck out your soul, spin it in the blender, coat it in butter and deep fry it.

Please, god, no more travel shows with Next Star rejects!

For Fatherwizard!

Hello everyone,

I'm writing to you today because I have a small proposition. See, our good friend FatherWizard and his family are in a bit of a pickle. An unexpected car unexpectedly doing unexpected things has caused it to die. Probably with a really sad death scene too.

I want to help, and I thought "Ah ha!" I'm pretty good at making trees. Trees people like. Such as the trees below.

And many more in various shades of colors, sizes, gnarledness.

Ah but the deal. The deal is this, you donate whatever you can spare to help Fatherwizard and I'll make you a tree, or something comparable if you don't like trees (philistine). How complicated and awesome it gets will depend upon the size of the donation.

Anything under $5 will run in the adorable palm sized on paper.

$10-$20 in the full sheet of paper big kahuna tree.

And if someone wants to kick in $50 I'll roll out the canvas!

After paying shipping on all those pretty paintings I'll donate the rest to FatherWizard. Cross my heart.

So if you want your own little (or big) tree painting/sketch/tattoo and to help out a wonderful man click the button below.

I'll get in contact with you about what kind of tree and what not you'd like, or I'll make you something nice if you can't decide.

Thanks for your time.

All Hallows Read Posters 2012

The posters for 2013 are up and ready for anyone to download or print here.

And here are the posters for 2014.

---

Chills are creeping in.

Ghosts and goblins are creeping out.

It's once again time to get your spooky read on.

Last year I made posters of the classic universal monsters enjoying their favorite macabre tales of horror.

This year I went a bit more classic Halloween, lots of bats and spiders and, uh, mummies.

Once again click on them, save, print off, have your own ticker tape parade all for free.

2.

3.

4. I think this one is my favorite. Warning, spider!

And if you have any interest in last years they're all here, also available for download and what not.