July 2015 archive

Bottled Nightmares

One of my best Father’s Day gifts was the Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ5 digital camera . After spending close to a decade using the same digital camera I bought in back in 2000, a Canon Powershot A-10, the difference is like night and day. I’m finally able to take some quality shots of my props! Well, …

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Preserved Tissue Specimen Tutorial

There’s nothing quite like a preserved bit of nastiness in a bottle. A specimen floating in murky liquid in a dirty sample jar just calls out to people.  They want to pick it up, turn it around, and take a good look at what’s inside.  The ickier it is, the better. This tutorial will show …

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Creepy Crawlies

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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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“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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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6’+ Episode 152 is Up!

To quote the description given at the new listing: “Hear how many languages Strange Jason mangles throughout this annual international episode! Music from DIRTY FUSE< MODERN MONSTERS, CLOCKWORK PSYCHO and more. Monstermatt Patterson deals with a Mattyslvania Coup in a MONSTERMATT MINUTE and we find out that the Krypt of Khaos is Duty Free in …

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Watching Night of the Demons (1988)

[The following occurred just a few days ago, after the writer decided to finally watch this 80’s horror classic] [Well into the movie] AMM: Oh, it looks like Linnea Quigley’s famous breast scene is about to start! I’ve heard it’s amazing. [A little later] AMM: Okay, she’s topless. Is this it? I swear, some people …

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H.P. Lovecraft’s The Dunwich Horror

Strange things are afoot in Dunwich, Massachusetts. The daughter of a local eccentric has given birth to a goatish-looking child named Wilbur who ages at a rapid rate. How rapid? He can walk and talk at only eleven months old and can pass for a teenager when he is four and a half! If this …

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6’+ Episode 151 is Up!

To quote the description given at the new listing: “There’s so much new music in 2015, that we had to take another episode to celebrate the first half of the year. Music from SKURKARNA, THE REVERB SYNDICATE, THE HEX DISPENSERS, MESSER CHUPS and more. Monstermatt Patterson spends some time, spinning some rhymes, with another MONSTERMATT …

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