The Best of the Best: Skull Shoppe

It is with great honor that we are finally able to blog about a dear friend of ours with amazing talent and a new online store.

If you ever hang out at Hauntforum.com, then the works at this shoppe will be very familiar to you. These are the amazing works of sculptor extraordinaire Scourge from the forums. The man has a true passion for sculpting accurate and realistic skulls. He has been wowing us in the forums with his talent for quite sometime. He also happens to be an extremely nice guy!

So please support a fellow haunter and show the man some love this haunting season!

Congratulations on your new web store Scourge!

Amazing Giveaway from The Shadow Farm

Do you know Dave the Dead from The Shadow Farm?  If not, you really, really should.  So much talent rolled up into one person that sometimes he scares me.

Okay, MOST of the time he scares me.  But then again, he’s trying to… so that’s ok.

If I had found these Easter Eggs when I was five, I would still be having nightmares.

That’s just how Dave does it.  ;)

Visit him at The Shadow Farm and enter to win HERE.

FYI

You might have noticed that I (being Dawn) have been a little scarce lately.  Well, just humor me and ACT like you noticed that.  ;)

I started a new girlie blog of my very own, because believe it or not, I really like decorating my home in bright vibrant colors, and I rarely (ok never) get to talk about that on this blog.  Jayson would kill me and use me as a prop in the haunt if I did that.

So, I have been putting some time into getting my new blog up and running, the web design of it all has taken longer than the posts themselves!

Not that any of you would be remotely interested, but the page is called Wacky Whimsy and can be found here.  (Well, except for Frog Queen, who, bless her heart, was my first non-family member follower, LOL  Thank you for that!)

Jayson told me this morning (in a voice that screamed “traitor!”) that since I have all but quit posting on NickolsManor lately, that I should just combine the two and call it Wacky Manor.  I died laughing.

We would be the only blog in the (short) history of blogging to lose every one of their followers in one day.  So don’t worry, he was just joking.  Just know that I’m still here, just a bit scarce for a bit.

Happy Sunday, hope it is fairly warm where you are!

Oh, and….. GO SAINTS!  (sorry, had to say it!)

Cool Idea: “Secret Santa Can Suck It”

A Virtual Secret Santa for members of your fellow Haunt community – where you don’t have to spend a dime, but put a bit of thought into it and make someone smile…. who could ask for MORE?

Its a creation first brought on by Bee's Musings last year, that happily was stolen and reused this year by Cobwebs at Shadow Manor.   (Click on the Shadow Manor link to read more on how it works)

Today is the last day, so if you are interested in giving someone the perfect virtual gift, and have a heck of a lot of fun…. sign up by commenting on the Shadow Manor post HERE Today, as names will be grouped together tonight.

And be watching in the coming days, as both Jaybo and I have signed up…. because SECRET SANTA CAN SUCK IT.

Haha, I just like saying that.  :D

Blog Spotlight: Johnny Thunder’s Midnite Spook Frolic

Haunters are some of the best people I have run across – both in person, and in real life.  I would really like to share some of the encouragement that we have been given in our first year in the Haunting Community, and introduce you to some blogs you may or may not know about.  Either way, they will all be from people that have inspired me, encouraged me, or otherwise touched my life.

The first blog is Johnny Thunders Midnite Spook Frolic.  I know many of your are familiar with the famous JT from Haunt or Halloween Forum (and probably others that I dont even know about!) and especially Hauntcast.  (JT, there is not a single bad day that I could have that would not be instantly brighter just hearing that LAUGH of yours!)  But you may not know that he has an amazing blog that he just started on September 21, 2009.

If you are on the forums, you have been no doubt amazed by the threads with articles of the strange and stranger…. and he keeps us up to date with horror movie news and reviews on Hauntcast.  But the blog… well, his blog is a thing of wonder for Horror movie buffs and haunt enthusiasts alike.

It promises “Monsters, Martians, and Madmen”, and it delivers.

Classic horror movie reviews?  More than you can imagine.  Movie poster eye candy?  As far as you can see.   General tidbits, including actor/actresses’ birthdays, movie screenshots to take you back through memory lane, more of those wacky articles he finds about the weirdest things I have ever heard of, festival/convention info, horror DVD releases and of course, announcements of the newest release of Hauntcast.

All wrapped up into one amazingly entertaining blog.  Its a visual treat, as well as such a good read.  If you arent already a follower, you will be doing yourself a favor to add him to your list.

Johnny Thunder, you are a treasure to the Haunting Community for all that you bring to it, and speaking for myself, I appreciate all the time and effort you put into it!

~Link Time~

As I mentioned in my first post, there would be few props we had tried without the very talented Halloween online community.  Intermittently we will be adding some of our favorite links that have helped us so much… hopefully they can help someone else that is just starting out.

The links in this particular section are the ones I have bookmarked in the “General” folder – that means they are considered part of my DIY Haunt BIBLE… they have wonderful specific projects, but really, they are the ones that I poured over for hours, just trying to soak up general techniques.

Of course, I have already mentioned two of my personal favorites in previous posts - Spooky Blue, and Stolloween, and here are the rest:

Raven Manor

Terror Syndicate

Howloweenqueen - The Ghostess

and the following 3 are huge pages of links that are categorized for easy access to whatever project you need ideas/help with.

Haunt Project

The Monster List

Haunters Hangout

In the next “Link Time” I will list some project specific pages that were of great help to me.

It is with the great works of the artists above, and their commitment that many of us are able to even get started… so I hope these links can help someone just starting out!