Halloween Lantern for a Haunted House

12 Eerie Visions of Creeps and Chills, Glow for HALLOWE'EN Thrills!

Bindlegrim vintage-style 2012 Halloween Hex Lanterns are officially here, with one listed as of yesterday evening via ebay (ending 2/19)! So I wanted to share a spooky batch of detail photos taken of this old school lantern featuring all new Bindlegrim imagery. (Below is the lantern front and back in its packaging).

This is style #3 The Haint House - a limited edition of only 5 offering this particular Bindlegrim imagery. As mentioned in a previous entry (The Haint House Halloween Lantern) inspiration came from vintage images of haunted houses - and unlike the old lanterns usually displaying a repeat of 6 images - these new lanterns offer 12 distinct panels (also because I have so much fun creating the images). The Haint House reveals doors, windows, and cracks, oozing with skeletons, mice, ghosts, mice, ghouls, mice, witches,  mice, bugs, snakes, mice, zombies, and other Halloween oddities such a winged moon with sharp teeth.

Here is a flickr gallery of The Haint House that shows the Halloween lantern from various viewpoints - hung in pendant style, with detail shots and in its packaging.

For consideration of the materials of this paper novelty - the lantern frame is made from acid-free 2-ply matt board with a nod to archival quality. The images are printed of durable laser-prints on vellum. And just like the good old days are Made in the USA and hand assembled. Holes are in top for string or thin wire for hanging: (I didn't wire any of these as to keep them pristine - so the photos below show it hanging by the flip switch on the socket --- not recommended for long term placement).

It's hard to tell in current photos (created more for detail rather than mood) but I'm using a 3 watt flicker bulb from the local hardware store in this lantern (and suggest either this or a battery operated candle). It creates the perfect eerie ambiance since the vellum allows low light to shine brightly. Any hotter/brighter bulbs, open flames, or moisture are not advised since this is a fragile paper novelty, and those are the very same terrors that warped, burnt, and destroyed vintage lanterns from the 1920-30s.

If you have any questions on availability of any limited edition styles --- (still hoping to see earlier versions for #1 The Pumpkin Dream and #2 The Cornish Litany follow soon) --- feel free to contact me.

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In other notes - I want, in future, to get a list of additional links for great vintage holiday artists and sellers, but in the meantime wanted to mention a wonderful seller that I've had the pleasure of purchasing items from in the recent past - 55audrey.

The seller offers a long-time popular booth on Bonanza (Audrey Grace Vintage) as well as Ebay (Book Shop) --- and also provides holiday tidbits through a newsletter and twitter. Recommended!

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Happy Valentine's Day everyone and heres to more haunted fun throughout the year of 2012.

14 Free Cupids for Pixel or Print

While visiting the office.microsoft.com templates page the other day, noticing their current selection of free Valentine templates, I re-discovered this funny little Valentine that I created while contracting there, and wanted to say a few words about this versatile Valenttine's Day Countdown Calendar which was created as something to be enjoyed in either printed format or in PowerPoint.

The opening screen (or front of the card) of this Valentine features 14 numbered doors with cupids delivering love letters through the mail. What the doors reveal is totally up to you. While the download file has already been preset with images and text - you can easily change these. (The first image below shows the doors - and the second image shows a couple of doors still closed but others revealing images and text).

I haven't had a chance to explore this myself, but I think it would be fabulous to do a version on actual paper. Basically, you would print screen the scene with closed doors, and then print screen the scene with all items revealed. On just the front image, cut in such a way that the doors would swing open. And again, you can customize the back image to contain your own text, images, photographs, etc. Glue the two pieces together around the frame of the doors - and you've got a cool interactive Valentine! (The image below is a mock-up of how this might appear, doors ajar):

If you want to do use this digitally on PowerPoint, this help article (How to create a personalized Advent calendar), while it actually discusses a similar type of PowerPoint template, (an Animated Advent Calendar I had created for Christmas), the basics hold true for updating this Valentine.

Happy Valentine's Day 2012...!!!

The Haint House - Halloween Lantern (style 3)

For those keeping track with the small buzz generating over the new vintage-style 12-pane Halloween lanterns; if all goes according to plan, it looks like the first of these should start appearing February 11th, 2012...! But the new question is - "Which style will show up first?" A short run down of the styles so far include:

1) The Pumpkin Dream
2) The Cornish Litany
3) The Haint House
4 to ?) to be announced during 2012

The new panes for style #3 The Haint House were finished just yesterday. This is perhaps the spookiest so far? The imagery was inspired by a fun 1950's candy container called "Boogie House for Ghost & Spooks" seen below:

One of the fun parts of creating these lanterns is dreaming up 12 scenes in a theme for each pane. Here are 6 of the 12 pane designs for The Haint House lantern.

If you missed imagery in development on styles #1 & #2 you can see The Pumpkin Dream lantern styles in the Bindlegrim facebook gallery Bindlegrim 2D Works, and The Cornish Litany style in previous blog entries (The Cornish Litany Lantern (Limited Edition) & Cornish Litany Lantern and Postcard Set).

Cornish Litany Lantern and Postcard Set

If you haven't checked out the Bindlegrim facebook page these last few days (late January 2012), you may have missed this prototype Halloween lantern photographed in the galleries there. This first image shows Halloween lantern style #2 (The Cornish Litany) of signed limited editions available soon over the next couple of weeks. There will be 10 or less of any given style.

The Bindlegrim facebook page also has a gallery of 12 postcards images - coinciding with the release of lantern style #2. Each postcard is an image from on of the window panes of the Halloween lantern. Only 25 of each image is being printed, and these should be available mid February 2012.

Wondering what Halloween lantern style #1 looks like? There are some sneak peek images of that too on the facebook fan page. If you haven't become a fan of the Bindlegrim facebook page - click on the image below and give it "a like", and thank you for checking out the recent Bindlegrim news!

P.S. I would like to thank The Scribbling Sea Sprite (Random musings about books and the craft of writing)  for the supportive Bindlegrim blog entry today!