#13: The Fates for Summer 2025

Arriving for Summer 2025 there is a new Bindlegrim Halloween 12-side collapsible  German-style lantern (#13 - The Fates) seen most recently on @Bindlegrim (IG). This one will have an edition of seven - and unusually combines both lighting with a fortune game.

The lantern continues the Bindlegrim limited-edition series of industrial-method panels made of sturdy 2-ply museum board that reveals laser-print vellum panes - made in mind of no-heat LED lights or small battery candles.As for the fortunes there are six pre-told visions that slip into the bottom panes. These fortunes were penned by Bindlegrim under divine inspiration from The Fates - so he takes no responsibility for their snarky witchery!

Bindlegrim 2025 vintage-style Halloween - The Fates (top).

Bindlegrim 2025 vintage-style Halloween - The Fates (bottom).

By the way, about the imagery... while two of the faces were directly inspired by Gibson Art Co. (and givewn some artistic embellishments by Bindlegrim) Halloween collectors will notice six different expressions. Bindlegrim expanded upon her apparent acting repertoire to include the basic human expressions which some theorize to include anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise. (The original Gibson witch seems to have felt happiness and disgust).

Lantern detail: witch expressions of disgust and fear.

Lantern detail: witch expressions of happiness and surprise.

Lantern detail: witch expressions of sadness and anger.

Bindlegrim lantern 2025 - #13 The Fates w/fortunes.

Bindlegrim is producing these right now - clearing up a few snags along the way - but expects these arriving soon for sale on the Bindlegrim etsy shop, likely along with some older Bindlegrim from the past which may be in stock still. Some of the older designs are seen on this blog and @bindlegrim on Instagram.

Working on label design for The Fates by Bindlegrim.

By the way, have you been keeping up with Bindlegrim these past couple of year? Bindlegrim recently created for THR some industrial style vintage products (below) based on 1940's faux stained glass window products. The new items are true to the general feel of vintage pieces, but cannot be mistaken as such (as with other Bindlegrim productions) due to a deliberate difference in size, imagery, color, and production.  Much like the lantern (above) the windows are made of 2-ply museum board but with in this case use colored tissue paper. For more images see THR's website or THR's online book shop (or even via Instagram @halloweenretrospecs), but note Bindledgrim is not selling these - they are free with a copy of THR's newest edition of research from its archive library publications on Etsy. 

Dual-side faux stained glass paper window (2 shown) for THR.

THR, V4 featuring an homage window by Bindlegrim

The Halloween Retrospect Vol 1,2,3,4 & Halloween Artifacxts.

Well, to close this blog entry, Bindlegrim notes this vintage-style artist has had the pleasure of being involved with Volume 1 and Volume 4 digests above, but is happy to return once again creating vintage-style decorations that bring olde Halloween to modern times. 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Bumble Bindlegrim (@bindlegrim)

Seven Nights

Added some last-minute vintage-style honeycomb decorations, full-base Beasties, to the Bindlegoods shoppe (which closes for the holiday this Friday night October 23rd). Below are photos of this just-added variation, smaller-run of twenty sets. Note also that a couple of last year'sSpooklights shades (mostly sold out as of this writing) will likely be the last with that particular imagery. Happy Hallowe'en!

Blood Moon Assembly

The assembly - a gathering of like minds under the harvest blood moon...

Another reason why I enjoy making Bindlegrim's Bindlegoods... Sometimes I imagine this must be what the shelves of the old, early-century warehouses must have looked like as they prepared paper goods (in rows upon rows) to ship out for the season...

The Cottage Industry of One Spook

Getting ready here at Bindlegrim's studio for Halloween Trunk Show 10 in Denver!

Although Bindlegrim's art/design objects utilize many processes reminiscent of larger scale production (printing, die-cutting, etc)... there is still the manual assembly (and signing) of these limited-edition Beastie (final product shown here). Somehow after all the time spent creating the art... I conveniently forget about the impending assembly. None of this is made in China. This is, as mentioned perhaps previously, a one-spook operation. Many hours yet to go!

Here are some quick photos of the process of multiples... 

Go Forth and be Beastlie...

Thank you all for your patience with this one-spook enterprise as the initial Beasties are assembled and shipped. These are new processes to the stiff ol' Bindle fingers, and I want to make sure these vintage-style honeycomb baskets are done correctly. I hope you'll let me know what you think upon their arrival at your doorstep... and maybe snap a photo or two of them in your autumn decor. See previous entry for some display ideas.

I really enjoyed packaging the first three inside their vellum envelopes tonight and boxing them up for their journey. Here's a photo of #1/50 just before the lid closed... and Bindlegrim slouched off to bed with a contented grumble.

What makes a Beastie? These roly-polys use a orange tissue-paper honeycomb re-created to have the smaller spacing and layer count of vintage items circa 1920-1930. The characters have a slot within the basket that allows for Halloween treats or placement of a small battery operated tealight. Authentically diecut characters are dual-side printed (in a limited-edition run) in rich color of blacks, oranges, and yellows on a thick 34pt matte stock. (with an almost waxy surface) They can be placed in upright positions (with minimal support), tilted (at their randomly natural angle), or as I discovered when a wind came thru the window - in spinning motion across the table.

Beasties

Having a fun photoshoot (of aritst proofs) with sticky claws, the smell of sugar, as the tissue and crepe paper whispers in the  ever so slight chill of the September morning air. With photos now done for the store... later today will be the official arrival of the Bindlegrim's 2015 Beasties on the Bindlegoods Shoppe: http://bindlegoods.bindlegrim.com 

What makes a Beastie? These roly-polys use a orange tissue-paper honeycomb re-created to have the smaller spacing and layer count of vintage items circa 1920-1930. The characters have a slot within the basket that allows for Halloween treats or placement of a small battery operated tealight.  Authentically diecut characters are dual-side printed (in a limited-edition run) in rich color of blacks, oranges, and yellows on a thick 34pt matte stock. (with an almost waxy surface) They can be placed in upright positions (with minimal support), tilted (at their randomly natural angle), or as I discovered when a wind came thru the window - in spinning motion across the table.

As night falls, I do hope to get some better photos of their lighting potential. Here are couple of earlier photos using battery-operated tealights...

Rolypoly Bogle

Work is proceeding in the Bindlegrim-atorium (taking a break in the studio from the last few years of lantern work) and instead exploring the wold of vintage-style honeycomb decorations. The first release should be this set of four vintage-style rolypolys.

Scarecrow mockup is about 8"tall and 5" x 5" around. See more on flickr or the Bindlegrim facebook fan page.

P.S. Thanks again to Pumpkinrot for featuring a few of these characters while they were in development. 

Orange-Black-Yellow

Getting back to the imagery for that first set of vintage-style roly-polys... (see Halloween Hibernation) and considering doing these in traditional orange/black/yellow colors...

Halloween Hibernation

Bindlegrim returns to vintage-styled Halloween designs, now for 2015, after a much-needed winter's rest. And as of today travelled to meet some old friends. First stop was a cave, hanging out with this familiar-faced witch creating some new finery for her with this honeycomb base. I plan next to meet with a certain black cat, bogle, and devil (from 2014 Spooklights) to outfit them all in a similar fashion so that a full set is available on Bindlegoods.

Here's a a couple of snapshots of the witch showing off her new orange honeycomb base, by an old haunted tree just outside the cave entrance.

Stay tuned for all things Bindlegrim this coming year, through the blog, as well as facebook and twitter. 

A Halloween Tree

As of today Bindlegrim has packaged and mailed the first dozen Bindlegoods  orders and ran out of posted stock. So I checked materials in the studio and made sure it was okay to stock another 12 of both the Spooklights lamp shade and the candle holder for further availability of these vintage-style decorations on the Halloween store. If you missed the announcement from the Bindlegrim facebook fan page - the Bindlegoods storefront is open for business.

One of the things I love about the maker process is the challenge of designing not only the puzzle-like components to a single Halloween lantern, but making all these various completed objects, (like the shade and base), fit together to create expanding display possibilities. And there were a couple in the Future Release section of the website that needed a little extra work...

This weekend the daunting task of re-designing the "octopus lantern" was finally approached, and happy to report the mock up is even more sturdy than the first. As well, the lamp post, expiring on the drawing board, had a newly hand-cut mock up created today. While it had been originally designed solely  as a lamp post, its similarly formed component structure also allows it to be used with the lamp shade. I envision a forested table display of Halloween trees...

The Witches of Spring

But the question is which witch? Here in the third installment of imagery promos for the upcoming Spooklights, our vintage-style Jack O'Lantern pumpkin is this time paired with a green-faced wicked witch. The series began as very saturated, however, I've been periodically toying with a less saturated, vintage tonalities. I think I may go back and edge these more toward the slightly less colorful muted by sepia.