Graham Bartram produced these nicely done bottled specimens and sent over some helpful tips: “I’ve made my first couple of bottled specimens and attached a couple of photos to so you can take a look. I hope you like them. What a learning experience that was. In hindsight I can see a couple of things …
Tag: Propnomicon
Jul 28 2015
The Congo Specimen
Another specimen from the Miskatonic University collection, this time from the 1927 expedition to the Congo. As usual, things didn’t end well. The glowing fluid is a by product of illuminating the interior of the jar with reflected light. The tabletop is lit by shop lights on both sides. Light passes into the jar and …
Jul 27 2015
Bottled Beastie
Another preserved worm that just happens to be available on Ebay. With the crass commercialism out of the way… I think I may have figured out why the epoxy resin teeth on some worms pick up the dye used to color the water. Before I close up a jar I add a few grains of …
Jul 26 2015
Latex Longevity
This is a followup to Saturday’s post about the effect on long term immersion on the kind of latex creatures using in “things in a bottle”. After 48 hours out of the solution the worm has dried and shrunk back to it’s original size. Based on that I think it’s safe to say that the …
Jul 25 2015
“Thing in a Bottle” Longevity
Today I opened up a latex “specimen” that I bottled up in June of last year. Why? To test the effects of time on both the bottle seal and the critter inside. The seal, consisting of an internal and external layer of silicone for the lid and a coating of melted wax, was in absolutely …
Jul 24 2015
A Discovery of Earth Shattering Importance
I think I may have made a major breakthrough in the field of “Thing in a Bottle” technology. It’s downright embarrassing how little discoveries like this make me giddy. Heh. One of the reasons I don’t make solid polymer clay or resin creatures is that they’ll eventually break after repeatedly hitting the glass inside a …
Jul 23 2015
Teeth
I’ve been on a “things in a bottle” spree for about a month, cranking out Halloween decorations for friends looking for something to add to a shelf display or mad scientist’s lab. In the process I’ve picked up a few more refinements to the “Making a Thing in a Bottle” tutorial and its followups (here …
Jul 22 2015
Making A “Thing In A Bottle”: Addendum II
This is a followup on the original post featuring the Making a “Thing In a Bottle” tutorial. Since then I’ve made about three dozen more bottled specimens, progressively refining the technique as issues impacting the long-term stability of the projects pop up. I’ve previously written about ways to insure an air-tight seal. This post will …
Jul 21 2015
Making A “Thing In A Bottle”: Addendum
Based on a few experiments I carried out over the weekend I’m going to add one more step to the Making A “Thing In A Bottle” project from back in March. As you can imagine, that tutorial has been getting an increasing amount of traffic as Halloween approaches. In the vast majority of cases it …
Jul 20 2015
Making A “Thing In A Bottle”
There are a couple of tutorials for creating “Things in a bottle” floating around, but this is my approach. It’s a relatively simple process that’s designed to produce a high-quality prop from cheap, readily-available materials. First off, you’re going to need a “thing” to bottle. For this example I’ll be using a tissue sample from …
Mar 04 2015
The Worm Turns
Surprisingly enough, I do a lot of decorating for Halloween. I used to be involved with a number of haunted house attractions and loved the kind of big, flashy props that those environments require. Electric chairs with flashing strobe lights and maniacs wielding roaring chainsaws are certainly effective, but as I’ve grown older I’ve developed …
Dec 02 2014
The Ponape Scriptures: My Edition
With all this discussion of tomecraft I thought it would be appropriate to share some of my own efforts. All of these pictures are from a small run of about a dozen copies of the “Ponape Scriptures” that I did around ten years ago. I thought I’d lost all the pictures I’d taken of them, …
Sep 04 2014
Wooden Cthulhu Fetish
From the Miskatonic University Special Collections, a native artifact recovered from an archeological dig in the summer of 1926. Traditionally, Dr. Francis Morgan would use first and second year students to explore interesting historical sites across the state to give them some experience with actual field conditions. That year he decided to excavate the area …
Jul 03 2014
Quick And Dirty Alien Artifact
A friend of mine is having an “Area 51” themed Halloween party and asked if I would be willing to come up with some decorations. He already had an awesome prop of a grey alien in a cryochamber from last year (created from a cylindrical Coca-Cola ice cooler he salvaged from a local convenience store) …
May 06 2014
The Finger of Nephren-Ka
I’ve been working on this particular project for a while, which is a bit embarrassing. In theory this is a trivially easy prop- a mummified finger. What made it so time consuming is that I wanted to do it with old school gaff techniques while making it realistic enough to meet modern presentation standards. Part …
Jan 14 2014
Unknown Specimen
This is a followup to the Mongolian Death Worm gaff back in May. The basic idea behind this series of projects is to create a sideshow-style gaff using techniques and materials that would have been available in the early 20th century. For this one I used the same materials as before- paper, flour, glue, and …