The Magic Of Monsters

This weekend we move our oldest off to college. He'll only be an hour and a half away but life as we know it is about to change. I teeter between excitement for him and pity for me.

In these days that lead up to him going off on his own I find my mind flashing back to various points along the way. His birth...his first day of school...his first Halloween, etc.

This bit of reminiscing has also caused me to revisit my youth. I was a child of privilege. I am a product of the generation that grew up when monsters were cool.

When I first started poking around the Halloween scene online and got to know others of like-mind I was delighted to see that many were in my age range. Oh, sure, there are the young guns out there that get into Halloween but we in our 40's, 50's and 60's were privileged to experience real Halloween magic.

Back in the day the back of many a magazine was littered with advertisements for monsters and other creepy goodness. In the 70's you could send away for your very own 7' tall monster with authentic glow-in-the dark eyes for only $1 (plus a 35¢ postage and handling fee).

picture source: My Monster Memories

How about a Do-It-Yourself Vampire Kit? Just a buck!

There were monster kits:

picture source: Unimonster's Crypt

Monster mags and comics:

And, TV offered Addams Family and The Munsters:

picture source: FanPop

I know that the further we get away from our childhood the more idyllic the memories become. Many of us in this age grew up during war, gas shortages, recession and more ugly stuff, but I still contend that it indeed was a magical time to be a child.

My boys grew up in a completely different monster culture but I made sure that they got a good dose. I hope I've done right by my sons and that one day, in the distant future, they too will feel that their childhood was magical.

Haunt on!

Revisiting Fun With Monsters

Remember this post? Well, I spent a few minutes tonight assembling my happy little monsters into their new frames.

The monsters masks were printed on card stock paper in the highest DPI my printer could handle, and then I cut them out. I wanted to raise the pictures away from the background just a bit so I put Sticky Doos on the back of the paper masks.

The frames are scrapbook frames which feature a black velvet background so I just stuck the masks on the background.

So simple even a zombie could do it.

I love the look and can't wait to hang them up in my office - once I locate some more wall space.

Haunt on!

Fun With Monsters

From the project files.

This has been stashed on my to-do list for a while now. I thought these monster masks would be fun to print out, mount on mat board and frame. Lighthearted and fun with a touch of retro thrown in. Hey, not everything has to be dark and scary.

Get your own at Disney's Family Fun.

Haunt on!

Monster Painter

We blog in batches. Yep, the secret is out! I know, I know, you thought we popped in here in the wee hours of the morning with a coffee IV to bang out our blog. This is not possible because I am NOT a morning person and Tracy is usually at work somewhere between 4:30-6:30 am. (freak)

Another secret... we don't finish one blog and go to the next. We grab pieces here and there and fill in until the blog is complete. I can't even count the number of half written blogs we have. Some are awaiting pictures, witty commentary (ha!) or some other little thing.

In an effort to clean up some of the chaos behind the scenes I was going through these half written blogs and trying to get them finished up. That's when I came across HowCast.com that I mentioned yesterday which then led me to VideoJug.com.

Now many of you know my fascination with vid sites. (Yes, yes - I'm in a 10 step program) So, when I came across these sites I completely forgot I was finishing up old blogs and started watching vid after vid after vid. (I can't help it. It's like eatting candy corn - can't eat just one.)

I came upon a video titled Monster Painter so of course I had to check it out:



Now, these are basically presented as haunted yard art. However, I thought some of these might be fun to add to walls in a haunt maybe with a strobe light. Perhaps try them with glow-in-the-dark paint? Or do the white on black and cast a black light over them.

The creator of these "critters" (as they are called) offers 10 varieties that are available via download (Hey! No waiting!). The prices are reasonable especially since you get a PDF file and you use the same "critter" many times.

So, if you don't have enough on your Halloween to-do list you might want to check this out at MonsterPainter.com.

Sorry, gotta run! I just did a Halloween search on Google videos and it returned 352,000 results. I've got a lot of watching to do....