If Steve Kim‘s veiled women don’t make you feel a little uneasy, well, you’re not as easily spooked as I am. Maybe it’s the lone blue color, or the empty staring eyes, or the lack of darn near anything else on the page that does it. But the thing is, I like to feel uneasy every once in awhile – don’t you?
Montreal-based artist Sandra Chevrier is creating some of the best pop art I’ve seen in quite some time, mixing her own painting and illustrations with comics. Her work begs you to take the time to look at every detail, dissecting the male-dominated fantasy world from the oppressed woman lying beneath.
I always decorate for Halloween, but there’s no formula. Some years it’s only a porch full of pumpkins and others it’s something a little more. This year I decided that the windows in my guest room were begging for eyeballs.
And that’s how it started, with six dollars worth of poster board and a pair of scissors. My first thought was that I’d like for them to be a bit larger, maybe even bigger than the windows themselves, but I was happy. I shared this photo on Instagram and Facebook as an afterthought.
And that’s when the design by committee began! Several friends and followers suggested that the large living room window directly below needed teeth. And they were 100% correct, so back out came the scissors and leftover paper scraps.
A window full of neon yellow snaggleteeth later and more suggestions came pouring in. Friends who live in town started driving by with their children in tow and I even caught a few snapping photos.
The last suggestion that I entertained was the addition of some mean eyebrows with the last two scraps, which definitely made this DIY Halloween house monster complete. All-in-all it was a blast to create and I can’t wait to see the looks on trick-or-treaters’ faces in a few weeks!
Posted In behind the scenes, create, halloween, holidays, house and home, living, my house, outdoors
Only ten days until Halloween, and eight until my friends’ party, and I have yet to decide upon a costume! (Though a Nasty Woman shirt is the current frontrunner.) Camille Chew‘s beautifully constructed deity masks made out of digital prints that are painted, collaged, embellished, stamped, beribboned, beaded, wired, glittered, and more would be perfect. And yes, it would then be hung on my wall for all of eternity.
Part Sleeping Beauty and part serial killer, Núria Farré‘s deep and dark paintings of women submerged in water are both beautiful and unsettling at once. It’s all part of the Barcelona born and based artist’s attempt to combine the inner and outer worlds of each individual. (Pssst… occasionally you can find a piece or two of hers available for sale in her Etsy shop.)
Halloween was always played up as the best holiday at my house as a kid, which is probably why it remains my favorite to this day. I love the childhood innocence involved, as well as the more macabre side you learn about a few years later. My house is all decorated – maybe you’ve already seen it on social media – and I’ll be sharing more about that tomorrow. But for now here are four dozen All Hallows’ Eve treats I think you’ll love!
1/ 2-Ingredient Ghost Chocolate Cups 2/ Caramel Apple Sangria 3/ Screaming Face Print
4/ DIY Ghost Tassels 5/ Hand Painted Floral Pumpkin 6/ DIY No-Sew Monster Trick-or-Treat Bags
7/ DIY Paper Leaf Fall Garland 8/ Double Double Toil and Trouble Print 9/ Halloween Devotional Candles
10/ DIY Ghost Pinatas 11/ Moon Garland 12/ Printable Fang Treat Bags
13/ Printable Spooky Treat Bags 14/ S’mores Caramel Apple 15/ Skull Placemats
16/ Surprise Bloody Cake 17/ 3-Ingredient Hatchet Cookies 18/ Creepy Chocolate Chip Cookies
19/ DIY Bloody Baubles 20/ DIY Gilded Insect Faux Taxidermy 21/ DIY Marbled Candles
22/ DIY Optical Illusion Pumpkins 23/ DIY Skull Cake Plate 24/ Glow in the Dark Skull Pillow
25/ Skull Wall Decal 26/ Kitchen Sink Halloween Chocolate Bark 27/ Black Crow Doormat
28/ Printable Halloween Art 29/ Printable Spell Book Covers 30/ Sanderson Sister Black Sangria
31/ Sophisticated-Spooky Chalk Poster Set 32/ Vulture Print 33/ Beyond is All Abyss Necklace
34/ Creepy Eyeball Lollipops 35/ DIY Fornasetti Trays 36/ DIY Halloween Silhouette Plates
37/ DIY Marbled Indigo Pumpkins 38/ DIY Paint Pen Pattern Pumpkins 39/ DIY Sun Dyed Treat Bags
40/ Halloween Banner 41/ Hand Pillow 42/ Ladies Mannequin Hands
43/ Paper Bats Wreath 44/ Printable Spooky Candy Poppers 45/ Halloween Ornament Set
46/ Skull Chart 47/ Spooky Swirled Meringue Cookies 48/ DIY Wax Dipped Flowers
John Holcomb is a self-taught artist painting with Benjamin Moore’s Aura line and combining it with oil pastel linework. I love the combination of large fields of flat painted color paired with delicately drawn lines. Holcomb’s creations often feel like a distant relative of hotel room clown paintings, particularly the treatment of colors in each face. (I mean this as a great compliment.)
Britt Hutchinson‘s embroidery is full of darkness. Skeletons, nooses, and undertones of love fill tinycup needleworks‘ Instagram page, which is exactly how this artist got her start. Hutchinson says the skeleton subject matter began by being based on stitches she was learning during Chicago’s polar vortex in 2013. After “stitching and posting, stitching and posting” to Instagram that winter her business took off.
Brian Donnelly‘s paintings melt my face off. Wait, no but yes. The Toronto-based artist’s “melting” portraits are half perfectly coiffed, half perfectly defaced. The destroyed appearance is achieved through the use of hand sanitizer and turpentine, which has me curious as to what they look like before the chemicals are applied. How close to completion is each face?
These beautiful floor rugs by Atelier Février cost more than my first car (a 1987 VW Cabriolet convertible for those of you wondering), but goodness they’re a treat for the eyes. This is the kind of rug that people hang on the wall rather than lay underfoot. Each design features a modern look that’s been created with traditional craftsmanship.
