A Little Walk Through My Shop

A pic of me with Mr. Boney, my Victorian skeleton.

And a little walk through my shop. If you see something you must have, email me for the price.

Very Swampy Electric Visual Photo Shoot

The guys from Electric Visual (cool sunglasses, backpacks and such) saw my booth at the Old Barn and asked if they could rent out my living room to use for a photo shoot of items for their Spring 2012 catalog. Their concept was kind of a "True Blood" Louisiana swampy kind of thing. Like a back water cabin with old hunting things. So I brought home some of my stuffed alligators and skulls and they got to work.

They shot a lot of film in the house with my various props and then they discovered my husband's 1957 International truck out front and spent time setting up shots of their products in the cab and bed of his truck. I really enjoyed seeing the process of how a photo shoot is done.


I couldn't wait to see the finished catalog and finally a couple of copies arrived and guess what? The truck pictures were the main focus and only three shots were used with "my" props. One picture of ball caps and an out-of-focus stuffed gator in the background, one closeup of some tattered upholstery, and one leg from my albino racoon. LOL Well, you can imagine the fun my husband had with that! He wouldn't shut up about it all day. Oh well, at least I got a nice paycheck and it was fun watching the photo shoot and the guys from Electric Visual are really cool. Oh and the catalog is really well designed. It seems they ended up going with more of the textural pictures, not the literal ones and it was a good choice. They send me a CD of all the pictures, so here are some of the outtakes from the photo shoot.



One of the ideas was to shoot the wall of deer heads with dramatic up-lit shadows.

Mr Boney and a shot taken into the old ghostly mirror.

Even the raccoon head looks menacing with that uplighting.

Some skulls bleaching in the backyard.

The stuffed gator - the only star of the finished catalog besides my husband's old truck :-)

Edith, the albino raccoon got her moment in the spotlight. Even if she only has a leg showing in the printed catalog :-)

I liked the frog on the belts.

And finally, the famous truck cab where all the action ended up in the printed catalog.

And my happy husband, who got a new pair of sunglasses out of the deal.

Shrunken Heads and Voodoo Heads

I have been a little obsessed with shrunken heads lately. I was remembering back to when my cousins brought one back from Disneyland in the 1960s and I was intrigued and repulsed by it at the same time. Yes, we're talking about fake rubber shrunken heads. Then later, I remember building a room screen and it was going to have a voodoo-type theme, so I put these undulating copper points at the top and wanted to put a row of rubber shrunken heads all along the top edge. But this was before the internet and the only place I could remember seeing those rubber shrunken heads was Disneyland. One of my co-worker's wives worked at Disneyland so I tried to get her to pick me up a dozen or so shrunken heads, but that never worked out. And there's no way I'm venturing over to the land of enchantment, or whatever they call it because this hermit never goes where there are that many people! So now that I have my own shop space, I can let my love for shrunken heads finally run rampant. I have three of the better quality faux heads under glass.
Lots of the great old school rubber ones - they come in two sizes!

These are my favorites, they are so creepy and a little larger than the rubber guys.

And then, for Halloween, I got these great over-the-top voodoo heads! All styles are available on my website.

So aside from wallowing in shrunken head, this week I continued watching old episodes of Dark Shadows. I am torturing my husband with them :-) As a kid, we watched Dark Shadows every afternoon and then we would walk down the street to this creepy house that had a sign out front that said "The Kellers" - which of course we called "The Killers" house. There we would do a little dance in honor of Angelique, our favorite character. I remember looking in the mirror and hoping I would end up looking like Angelique. Well, the blonde hair is similar :-) I do believe being raised on Dark Shadows explains a lot about why I am the way I am!

Also this week, I sold the skeleton I had listed on my website to a lovely couple. I was sad to see him go because he was really a cool skellie. Now I am down to two skeletons, but have a lead on another. And so with a little more jingle in my pocket, it was on to finding more fun macabre things to put on my site.

I found this fabulous old mummified bat in his own little glass casket. This little gem is one I will keep (at least for awhile!). I love to collect things that look like they were owned by a warlock or something. I had a mummified frog in a jar once that was supposed to have been actually the property of a practicing warlock!

This little guy is great and I love his glass casket.

Another fun find this week was this display case with casket shoes inside. The shoes have a label patented and dated 1915, but I'm guessing the case is from the 1930s. These have a really spooky vibe and I love to find anything from an antique funeral home that is unique! I will be keeping this treasure for myself.

The case hangs on the wall and the glass slides open for further perusal of the delicate slippers.

The label inside the slippers says McCamish and is patented 1915.

I also found a pair of lilac pumps in their original box. Practical burial wear! They lace up the back to make them easier to put on the rather stiff feat of the dear departed.

I guess I am having a coffin shoe obesssion this week.

Another fun find was this antique home embalming kit from about 100 years ago. It has a wonderfully dilapidated case, two large glass embalming jars and some seriously crusty old embalming tubing. I will be posting this beauty to my website this weekend.

Check out the orbs in the last photo! This thing has a serious strange vibe to it - and no wonder when you think of where it has been and what was done.

Well, I think that pretty much covers my week and my latest obsessions. I hope your week was great!

Pandora's Parlor in Cottages & Bungalow Magazine!

Pandora's Parlor is featured in this month's Cottages & Bungalow magazine!

Several items from my shop were used for one of the Halloween decorating articles.
My faux Raven seems to have found a starring role.

They also used one of my skull replicas, a pretty silverplate candeabra and several potion bottles.

I have to say it was not the most pleasant experience dealing with the Cottages & Bungalows' stylist and I'm sure that is why I wasn't asked for any information on my items. They failed to credit the wonderful Halloween ornaments created by The Holiday Queen Melissa Valeriote. You can find these amazingly creepy ornaments here at her site.

These are the two pictures that have the Pandora's Parlor items featured.

The "Toad's Breath" potion bottle is one I purchased from Gothic Rose Antiques. Another mention that would have been nice in the article!

The Birds are Here!

The new flock of birds have arrived at Pandora's Parlor. Enter at your own risk!