Wednesday’s child is full of woe, and we won’t give her any reason to cheer up. Keeping it creepy every Wednesday.
It seems that no matter how careful I am while hard-boiling, a few eggs always get cracked. Perhaps they had weak shells, or the boil got a little too rolling, but whatever the reason, every Easter I get a few eggs that are a little the worse for wear before they even get to the dye. My daughter and I have evolved a tradition for taking care of these woebegone things. After all the pretty eggs have been dunked and dipped and set to dry, we start getting a little crazy with the dye. Red and green dye are dripped directly into the cracks and allowed to run around the eggs and dry, and then the eggs are dunked into whatever colors we want for however long we feel like it, which usually results in some pretty evil-looking colors. (Although, Kit sometimes likes to do a “fresh dead” egg; one that doesn’t immediately look all that gruesome.)
And when you remove the shell, you reveal another little surprise! The food coloring seeps through the cracks and stains the egg white. If you’re a kid, or a kid at heart, eating something that looks so gross is a lot of fun! I recommend a dash of salt and polish sausage with horseradish as complements.
Last year for Valentine’s Day, I helped my husband prepare for a very special photo shoot. The Zombie Pinups website was hosting a Zombie Valentine contest, and we wanted to take part. Zombie Pinups is run by a friend from Zombie Army Productions out of Chicago, and last year’s contest was judged by Matt Valentine; a contestant from Syfy’s Face Off. The prize was a great lot of horror-related swag. So my husband gathered together a team of makeup artists from the area, I helped prepare the set and costumes and he found a model he liked for the part, and we put together an entry. And we won! You can see a gallery of the complete shoot at my husband’s website, but be careful, as some of the images are definitely more risque than others. The giant heart-shaped floor pillow seen at left was my major contribution to the effort, and you can find instructions in another post.
I have a huge collection of vintage and antique postcards. I love the look and feel of late-Victorian and Edwardian-era cards, especially those with holiday themes. I also love an irreverent sense of humor and a hint of gore. Perhaps that’s why, while developing a new feature for the Lincoln ZombieFest website, I pulled out my postcards, flipped through them aiming for specific holiday themes and dates that put the cards well inside the public domain, and then got funky with Photoshop. The result was zombie eCards for your one true love.
Wednesdays give us the opportunity to step over to the darker side of cool. As we’re still in the beginning of this venture, and I’m still collecting my resources and planning posts, I’m going to take the easy way out on this one today. Raise your hand if you’ve ever wanted to embroider the circulatory system? Ah, yes, I knew this would be a popular choice. Because I collect antique books, but don’t really have a ton of money to spend on them, I troll thrift stores, garage sales and the free book box at my favorite local used book store, A Novel Idea. I’ll buy very old books, even in fairly poor condition, because I can still utilize them, even if I can’t read them. Currently, my oldest book is from 1880, and is a German-language translation of a popular 19th century home medicine book. It is a wealth of graphics. Amongst them is this diagram of the arteries, seen at right. You can download a PDF containing the graphic at 10.5″ high right here and I’ll be uploading a high resolution, transparent-background copy very soon. Enjoy!
