A Recipe for Mushroom Curry of YUM

 

Mushroom Curry with Cashews and Brown Rice

A good amount of button mushrooms, sliced
A half an onion, diced
Fresh Garlic - to taste
Olive Oil
Sea salt - to taste
A good amount of cashews - whole
Curry Powder - to taste
1 ripe tomato
Snow Peas

Brown Rice
Water

In your rice cooker or stovetop combine rice and water to create RICE!

While that’s happening heat up your wok or skillet and add in the onions and garlic along with some of the olive oil. Let these sizzle for a bit then add the mushrooms, snow peas, tomatoes, and curry until cooked through. Add cashews, let sizzle, stirring constantly, add salt as needed. You might need to put more water in the wok to keep it from burning or being too dry (this is what water does)

Apply food to rice, and then insert mixture into mouth. Chew, swallow, etc.

Rat garnish is optional and not for human consumption.

The final outcome will be considerably more smooshy and brown than the image. We just went crazy dressing it up. 

Into the Museum

 You may have noticed that some faces are missing from my shop now. . . this is for a very good reason.

 The Tatterpunk’s Carnival of Curiosities is going to have several dolls and hats consigned at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Gift Shop! This means that my shop is gonna get exposure, as well as meaning that I am gaining recognition as an actual artist. Yes, I know I already was an artist, but this seriously is a big step forward for my shop.

I will be making more dolls of course to be adding to my shop, so it won’t be so naked of them. Also I will be making an art portfolio website soonly with the help of the epic web designer friend I have who is coming back to the states.  There will be awesome! This is a short post, I know, but I’ll keep you all apprised of the progressions of things!

Coming up: A feature on an artist I love (Patricia Ducharme), and a feature on another etsy shop - Itami Designs (Tenshinoitami)!

Meet The Family of the Undead

 As you’ve seen, I utilize a lot of bones and skulls and mannequins in my photography for my site. These for the most parts belong to either myself or my roomie. They weren’t acquired for the purpose of modeling jewelry and accessories either. Mostly they’re our quirky decorations!

First off, we have Mr. mannequin Man. He’s currently wearing the 6th Doctor’s coat so he can stay warm by the window. He belongs to the roomie.  Next the exploded head man atop the science shelf. Eventually I want to put some blood spatter paintings behind his head. He doesn’t tend to participate as he is high up there.
We also have a white female hanging form, I haven’t used her for modeling yet, but it’s only a matter of time, it is!

The heads of course must come into play here. The glass one, which is so very very creepy, the standard styrofoam one for pinning unfinished items, and then the actual wooden hat block which was given to me by my brother in law. <3 So much awesome there!

That brings us to the bones!
If you couldn’t tell, my roomie and I enjoy bones.We have some deer skulls and some groundhog skulls as well as a scapula and femur from deer. There is a dog/coyote skull and a raccoon skull as well.

So that’s the undead family. . .They’re pretty awesome once you get to know them. 

that’s it for now <3

~The Tatterpunk

MAD MAKEOVER - BEFORE - RED CRAYON ARISTOCRATS

Hello! Welcome to the BEFORE section of the first ever Tatterpunk Carnival’s Mad Makeover Feature! I’m sure your absolutely thrilled (or terrified) to be here. I guess it’s sort of cheating a little bit because I actually know you, but we’ve all got to start somewhere, no?



The shop:  Red Crayon Aristocrats

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TATTERPUNK: You create amazing and adorable nerdy accessories based on survival horror and various other popular video games. Of course you already know that, but I’m writing this for the benefit of our viewers (er. . . readers) at home. I especially love your Silent Hill items, and I of course bought the Halo of the Sun Wallet from you (I absolutely adore the thing!).
To start out, we’ll get the basics out of the way. What was your main inspiration for starting your shop, and How did you come up with the name?

RED: Well, my main inspiration came from my friends, to be perfectly honest. I often make them jewelry sets and other little trinkets based off of survival horror (among other games) for holidays or for their birthdays; I could never find cute, girly things based off of survival horror. Therefore, I decided to create them, myself.

My gal buddies always told me "You need to sell these!"  I never really listened because, hey, they're my friends and I thought they were just being nice. :)

A couple of years back - 2008 to be exact - I purchased an Artist Alley table at a local Michigan anime convention, Youmacon; a friend of mine is in charge of the alley and I wanted to support her and her department. I sold some artsy crafts that I created and people actually told me that they liked what I did, much to my surprise! Cute panties are a surprisingly huge hit at anime conventions. ;)

At this point, I still didn't have an Etsy shop and would not for another year or so. The idea to go to Etsy came from a friend on Deviant Art who told me that I should open a shop. I figured "why not?" and did so. It's been fun, I must say. :)

As for the name of my shop, it came from the hauntingly beautiful Playstation 2 game entitled Rule of Rose.

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TATTERPUNK: As we’d previously stated, you take a lot of inspiration from the games Silent Hill and Resident Evil.  How did you get into Survival Horror Games, and what is your favourite (and why)?

RED: The first survival horror game that I ever played was Resident Evil. My grandmother got it for me for Easter. (Ironic?)  It scared me way too much for my weak preteen heart to handle. I couldn't get past the first zombie. And the horrid Are You Afraid of the Dark-isk intro scared me. I hid the game under my bed.

I really got into survival horror just around the time that Resident Evil 2 was released, which was when I was about 13 or 14. My little brother and I would play it and scare ourselves stiff. (Then we would play Final Fantasy 7 to soften the blow.)

My adoration for RE2 grew, thus I went back to RE1. This time around, it seemed easier and I was in love.

It opened a door into the amazing world of Survival Horror.

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TATTERPUNK: Another question the readers are interested in knowing the answer to is: how did you choose the medium you chose? Do you get your supplies locally, from etsy, or from some other means (possibly a pact with a spirit?)?

RED: Well, when it comes to what I use... an honest (yet cliche) answer is "everything". I'm pretty poor, so I started by using things that I already owned from my artbox or from my old cosplay inventory. I use everything from paint to ink; from fabric to plastic. Sometimes I create things from scratch and other times I have an item that I just alter. 

I get my supplies from a multitude of different places. Michael's and Joanne Fabrics are two of my favorites. Often the items that I will create come from something that I saw and purchased on a whim.

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TATTERPUNK: You vend these items at conventions, yes? I, myself have never actually done this (except one ren faire). So that brings me to the following questions. . . Is this a hobby for you? Would you like it to be more? Where do you see yourself in 5 years? - and please don’t say dead in a ditch because that would be very distressing to me.

RED: No worries, no ditches for me. ;D That is not on the agenda.

This is a hobby for me - I love video games and I love creating. I love socializing, meeting new people and making others happy. I love sharing what I love with others. I love talking in cheezy cliches.

Seriously, though, I would be thrilled to be able to create more often. Sometimes it gets hard trying to balance my job, my social life, my video game life and my online life (along with many other factors!) so I wish there were more hours in the day that I could just create things!

In 5 years... Hmm, I'm not exactly sure. I don't know where I'll be next week, haha. I hope to be married by then and perhaps have a child. I imagine that I will still be creating things that I love. It would be nice to still sell them but, if not, I will still be happy making them. :) I've loved video games my whole life, and creating,  so I doubt I stop making girly trinkets any time soon.
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TATTERPUNK: Now that we’ve got all that out of the way, let’s move on to the Before section of the Shop Makeover questions!

I understand that it can be terribly difficult to get your photos up to snuff, so that’s going to be one of the BIG things we’ll be working on. What sort of camera are you using currently?

RED: JVC Everio Memory Camcorder. Wonderful for taking videos. Not so great for taking still shots. (As anyone can plainly see from the images that can be found at my shop.)
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TATTERPUNK: Lighting  and setting is very important, so we’ll be working on how to use natural light to your advantage as well as props/models. Do you have any other areas you specifically want to work on?

RED: Lighting, props and models are my weakest points, as of now. At least, I think. I would like to get those down, then move on to more advanced techniques. ;)
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TATTERPUNK: Your assignment for the next few weeks (minus dance hell week mind you) is to make as many new items as you can so we can photograph them with the new knowledge I shall bestow upon you. Volume is key here. . . we shall get you up to snuff, and it shall be GLORIOUS!

---
TATTERPUNK: In conclusion, tell us a little about yourself.

RED: Well, there really isn't much...

I love people. I love survival horror. I love glitter. I love cute. I love macabre.

Umm...

...Here are some quotes that I think best  describe my philosophies on life:

"If you don't know where you are going, any path will take you there."

"Love the Life you live. Live the Life you love."

"Color outside the lines. It really pisses some people off."

In conclusion, I leave you with kitties:

kitties

Thank you again, Tatterpunk, I look forward to this makeover~! :D

__

TATTERPUNK: We shall post the After Feature once the shop has been worked up from epic idea to EPIC SHOP! Thanks so much RedCrayonAristocrats for subjecting yourself to The Tatterpunk’s bizarre brand of torture. ^_~

Every day is Raturday!

Hi there gentle readers!!
It’s time for yet another bloggie post!

Today I shall tell you about my real-lifey-stuff. I was going to do a story for a blog thing, but I am not done with it yet, so here we go with realstuff.

I live in an old factory in Richmond, it’s apartments now, but the area is sort of run down and bohemian at the same time. I call it The Storylands. It seems like the very air in this place is full of stories which are just waiting to be told.

There was a fire in the area a good hundred and twenty years ago, and the effects seem to still be about.  I woke one morning to an entirely burned man at the foot of my bed (and this wasn’t my usual sleep paralysis). He looked over at me and then vanished. Weird. There is also a little girl I’ve spoken to and seen on a few occasions. Yes, I see dead people. This is a normal occurrence for me. And yes, I’m also a bit crazy. Such fun!

My roomie is a blue-haired rivet-head mad scientist. She’s really quite epic and super crazy-smart. It is amusing the two of us, we just call each other right and left brain. She and her cat will be properly here soon. Pollux is the cutest kitty EVER.

I, myself, have the cutest rat ever. Her name is Brown Jenkin. My other rat Mistah J recently passed, as did the young rat we got named Yersina pestis as seen in this photo (post mortem photo). It was very sad. So now it’s just BJ.. she is INSANE. AND SO EFFIN CUTE, as seen in the top photo from Halloween times!

Most of my friends are in either separate cities or states, it’s sort of annoying. I’ve met some really cool people through selling on Etsy. So that’s more friends in other states! WOO!

FeatherAhead - the shop of one of my very good friends, has recently bestowed two lovely, lovely hats upon me. I adore them ever so much!!! My hair looks dreadful otherwise I’d take pictures of them now. The proprietess has also given me a bunch of amazing supplies - feathers, fur, fabric.. all sorts of things beginning with the letter F! For this I am very thankful. So, all of you go to her shop and buy EVERYTHING. The quality is amazing, seriously!!

I think that’s about it right now. I will probably do some shop-features soon, so stay tuned!

The Anti-Valentines Day Challenge

Sooo, it’s blogging time once again! I’m trying to actually get a lot more done - plus I have sooo many things to blog about lately that I may as well just do it!

Today’s blog is about the Anti-Valentines Day Challenge I set for my lovely Etsy Team - The Carnival of Curiosities! I have included photos of all of the entries (you can also see them in this treasury here - You Can Keep Your Heart ). All of them are exceptionally lovely, and I am so glad that we had all the entries we did.  The winner of the challenge is EternalDreamer  for her item Broken Heart.

Other entries and links are listed here:
Wiley Coyote Neckeater by FeatherAhead
Circus Sideshow Performers Valentines by PilousPercilla
My Heart Bleeds for You by SteamTimeJewelry
Love is Colder than Death by holidaytart
Modern Screw by jalinde

Thank you all again!!

More blogging soon - I must tell my readers all about the cool hats I got from FeatherAhead!

The Angel of Pain Models for Tatterpunk

This weekend was a busy one for the Tatterpunk. My friend Shelby came to visit so that we could go to the 30 Seconds to Mars concert on Monday, and she also agreed to do a photoshoot where she would model my hats and ruffs and things. SO! After hanging out for like a couple years all the time and living across an alley from each other, we finally had our first ever sleepover lol.


So Tuesday morning we got Shelby ready for the photoshoot.

First off, Miss. Shelby Day is the proprietress of Itami Designs (Tenshinoitami) on Etsy. She makes rather epic everything, mostly scene kid things, and her original designs which are very original mind you. Her facebook fan-page is here (Itami Designs Facebook page) so go like her stuff. In the photos she’s wearing a skirt and top she made - she has listings for custom versions on her facebook page.

We went out to the sewer drain-y area of the canal.. which sounds WAY more disgusting than it is. It’s terribly cluttered with old shopping carts and refuse which is sad, but it works out very well for the pretty pretty photos I wanted to take. My concept was to mix modern with nature, so it was excellent.

Shelby modeled my hats as well as various other items. The photos are of course here. She is absolutely beautiful, is she not? Makeup was by me. 

Mostly otherwise amusing things happened over the weekend, like the comic in the last blog post, and then the concert.... which was EPIC. Jared Leto came on stage in an officer’s hat (the rest of his outfit was lame... but the HAT), which was absolutely lovely. There was a lot of jumping around, screaming, singing along, you know the usual concert stuff. It was lots of fun. I am so out of shape though >_<.

Wacky Hijinx Ensued . . .

I was going to blog more about my hats, but it’s about 6 AM and technically I should so be asleep. So I will keep this nice and short (ish).
I have a bunch of updates on the hatting, but I think that will have to come perhaps two posts from now. . . I’ll be then doing the feature of my photoshoot as well as a bit about the model’s super duper epic Etsy shop. So . . . for now. . . Just some fun! (hopefully not too offensive... and please know I have nothing against hoboes or train folk. In fact I shall be one at some point whenever I decide that I have the time and stability to run away and train hop . . . but I shall not be so fail at it!)

The above comic is a true account of what occurred today on our car ride to find food. It was sort of hilarious. . . A Witch, A Rivethead, and an Emo-kid in a car together is bound to make for madcap shenanigans . . . I drew this afterwards. The man’s sign was written not only with very small lettering, but with either pencil or silver sharpie. Fail. . . I mean, yes, I feel bad for him if he’s having troubles, but you’ve gotta make your cardboard signs readable!  Click on the pic to enlarge it.

The other awesome thing about this... is that for the first time in maybe fifteen years. . . . I did a page of sequential art. . . . 0_0.  I am the one with the round glasses.

The Maddening Process of Art

Greetings, gentle readers!

I am today going to tell you all about the strange creative process I go through in order to create my strange art.
As some of you know, I am currently making hats (Queen of Blood) with needle felting and just general oddness. This was started up because the doll’s torso was taking FOREVER to dry. (Hat Progress) The hats are all entirely one of a kind, mostly because they’re art and not a craft. They sort of have a mind of their own you see.

I will often start out with an idea. So, I grab my materials and start work, intending fully to realize this vision I have had. You would think that one day I’d learn. You see, that is where things change. Once i’ve started a hat or a doll or anything really... suddenly it takes on its own mind and I must work with it otherwise it’ll end up ugly. This is of course how I end up with real moss on hats.

My sister had a boyfriend in high school who told me something that I took to heart and have always considered when doing art since. The hilarious part is that he was just messing with me, but it was true. I was doing drawing lots then, and he said to me that you have to look at the page and then see what it wants to have drawn on it. Interesting advice, but so useful in the long run. Now, a good ten-twelve years later, I am applying this to fibre arts. Sculpture and fabric work exceptionally well for this.

Take the queen of blood hat for instance it began as a totally different concept. I was going to have a sculpted anatomical heart and a spoon involved. Then I began, and the vein happened, and then I liked it without any spoons, then I thought it looked very queen of hearts.. so I was going that way with it. But THEN it started looking vampirey. . . so somehow it ended up this way. I am very pleased with it... but if I had just forced my original vision on it, I might not like it as well I think.

This is another prime example, though it’s by no means done. (The Moss Hat) this is the moss-hat. It began ENTIRELY different. I was going to make a sort of low topper which would be greenish and all that, but then it just started becoming UGLY. I shifted things around a bit, made it a small hat, then it began to look mossy rather than camo, so I added some moss... That gave me the idea to sculpt some toadstools.. so I did that, and they are on there. Probably there will be some porcupine quills on here and maybe some faerie wings. . . it should be epic and STRANGE.

The same process generally goes into dolls as well. They are sometimes even worse about having their own minds though. I end up talking to them a lot and asking them questions as I make them. Fun when they answer!

I’ll be making more hats in the near future, and keeping you all apprised on the progresses. I also am going to try to blog a bit more often. Next entry will be a short story if all goes as planned, and then I may do a feature of an etsy shop I love.

That’s all for now!

The Green-eyed Monster (the doll, not jealousy)

Hullo Gentle Readers!

I am returned. Today we will talk more about doll-making as well as a few other odds and ends. As you may know if you like my facebook page (Yes, click here, you know you want to) or if you read my previous entry, I am working on making a ball-jointed doll for myself. I started sculpting her just after Christmas, and I’m technically still working on the head >_<. To my credit it’s a lot of detailed work and a lot of sanding and the like.

Her eyes came the other day, and I have been working on making the sockets so that the eyes will sit snugly in them. That is going rather well, I think. The eyes as you may see above, are a truly lovely shade of green.

I suppose right now I shall explain the title of the previous entry. “Trapping Spirits in Dolls”. I have always loved scary stories, and really I don’t think any have been quite so scary to me as the ones involving dolls. I don’t mean like Chuckie or killer dolls from hell or whatever... I mean like that episode of the X-files called Chinga, the one that Stephen King wrote, or the haunted creepy dolls that you hear about people selling on e-bay. Or even Harold from the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books.

Those are the sorts of doll stories that creep me out. The ones that have some tiny grain of truth that the story’s built around like a pearl around sand. (BTW, we decided in a fit of sleepiness that sky pearls are made when you put a grain of sand in a bird). Dolls have always had something eerily mystical about them, and of course they have long been used as magical effigies to represent people in spellwork.

The poppet is used to represent a person that the spell is being cast upon, they are used to heal or to manifest (and yes, for darker purposes sometimes as well). And then of course there’s the Golem, which is a sort of doll brought to life from earth and alchemy. Dolls look like miniature people, oftentimes exaggerated in ways, with large eyes and child-like faces. It is not too hard to imagine that they could come to life or change positions in the night. And this brings me to my title.

When I make art, I like to be certain that it has life. This is quite the same of course with my dolls. I know that some of you may think I sound absolutely barmy here, but I talk to them while I’m creating them, asking them what sort of colours they like, things like that. And of course some are slightly more demanding than others. Freddie for instance decided to tell me very adamantly that she wanted bright red silk bloomers. So of course I obliged. This care, I feel, gives license for spirits to come live inside of the dolls. In fact, sometimes I will put them in one position when I go to sleep and they’ll be in quite another when I awake!

I am not actually “trapping” the spirits per-se, as giving them a home.

That being said, I shall now proceed to take the picture you see at the top of this page. Her name is Virginia, she is of course one of the good neighbors.