The Pen is Mighty

So, a couple of weeks ago, I'm surfing around on eBay, itching to buy something, and I get this bizarre notion in my head that I want to buy some fountain pen nibs. I don't know why, I just did. I have many fetishes (such as the tiny padlock fetish mentioned earlier), and one of them is office supplies. I've had a fascination with quill pens since I was very young. I bought my first feather quill when I was about 6 or 7 at the William McKinley Presidential Library & Museum. In the 80's and 90's I used to write letters to friends with a calligraphy pen.

So again, I'm on eBay, looking at pen nibs, and I find several auctions that I like. I bid on 5 of them (why I needed that many I don't know). I didn't expect to win all of them, but when I only won two (which sound have been plenty), I some how became incensed and determined that I must have more. As I mentioned in several older posts (remember the tiny locks?), when I get a hankering and make an impulse buy of some small trinket that I desperately want, I tend to buy a lot of them. I mean, a lot of them. So I went back on eBay to look for more, and I found a great little offering from Australia selling antique, new in box, post office pen nibs from England in gross boxes. It was all I could do to resist buying more than two boxes. Why I would ever need more than 288 pen nibs of the same size, is beyond comprehension. But I bought them. They are pictured above, along with one of a set of a dozen from another auction (lower left).

So, what to do with them, but make pens! I couldn't find any good deals on pen holders (the handles), so I decided to make some for myself. In the past I have taken turkey feathers from the craft store and cut them to make quill pens and sold them at my store for spell writing. They sell rather well, but they write for crap. I figured that a cheap and simple solution would be to glue the new pen nibs right to the tip of the feather and then wrap the joint for aesthetic purposes, and voilà, a good quality stylish writing instrument that was cheap and easy to make.

I used 5 minute epoxy to set the nibs in place, and then wrapped them with a leather cord, which I affixed with super glue. I also stripped some of the feather back to make a longer handle. Otherwise, the feather tends to get in the way of your hand when writing. I only had black and white feathers, but I intend to make some other colors when I get the chance. Ironically, about two days after I made these, I found a seller on eBay that was making the exact same thing. They even looked to be using the same type of nib and even wrapping them in the same type of leather cord. Weird. They are charging like $12+shipping each for theirs. I am only charging $7 each for mine in my store.

The first pen I made was actually a wooden handled one. It took me about an hour, maybe a little more, to make. I carved out a spot on the tip of a wooden dowel so the nib would sit flush. Then I did some tapering to the ends. It took me a little bit to decide how to decorate it, but I decided on engraving the handle with a motto, written in Theban script, and spiraling up the handle. It says "power of the word". Sort of a nod to that whole "the Universe was created with a word" thing. I used a piece of tape and wrapped it in a spiral around the shaft and marked along one edge with a pencil to get my baseline. Then I penciled in the letters. I had to redo this step three times. The first time, the spiral was going the other way, and the letters didn't want to lean that direction. It looked awkward. The second time I wrote "The power of the word", but found I didn't have enough room, so I truncated the first article. The third time it worked perfectly. Next I used a Dremel with a tiny tiny engraving bur to carve out the letters. Then I sanded and stained it with a mahogany stain and gave it two coats of polyurethane. I was content to leave it like that, but a few days later I decided to wrap the joint like I did with the feather quills. I'm still not sure which way I like it better.

So, all told, I now have around 350 quill pen nibs in about three different styles (not including my own personal collection of around 30 different speedball nibs for calligraphy). And of course it didn't stop there. Once I had nibs on the way, I decided I would have to make pens to sell in the store, and I can't sell pens without ink, so I had to go shopping for ink. I bought a 32oz. bottle of black india ink that I could repackage. But, of course that meant I would need bottles to repackage the ink. I searched around and the best deal I could find was on eBay for a lot of 288 bottles (WAY more than I needed), which cost me just over $60 with shipping. The bottles are the perfect shape and size for ink, but have ugly caps. I am experimenting with painting the lids and adding an appliqué.

Between the ink, the bottles, and the three different purchases of nibs, I've got about $130 invested into this little brain fart. I'll have to sell at least 30 pieces to cover my costs. That aught to teach me to impulse buy. Not.

Azathoth Box (WIP) part 1

Most of my projects seem to take forever to come to completion, partly because I work on up to 20 different things at once, but mostly because I'm lazy and get bored easily. I don't like to work with any sense of urgency. It hampers my creative process. This box has been slowly finding its way for the last few months. It was designed to be similar in style to another box I did a few years ago, but I don't think I want to do that same item again with this. I'm still looking for a new direction to take it.

These first two pictures are of the build process. The box was one of those pre-fab craft store things, but a nice one. I look for ones that have character to their shape, or that have physical features that are suitable for a particular purpose. I liked this one because it had a flat top, with slightly rounded edges, and thick walls suitable for carving into. I laid out my design in pencil, then carved it in with a dremel tool. I used a conical stone bit meant for grinding and polishing rather than a steel bur, because it sands the groove as it cuts and leaves a smoother channel. This is soft wood, and it tends to splinter and leave rough edges with a bur.

The glyphs I used were chosen for their aesthetic value and have no mystical significance. The bottom row of glyphs on the front and back were taken from some of my favorite fonts, as were the four corners on the top. The center top emblem is my typical eye and tentacles (Eye of Azathoth) with a sun or star-like motif thrown in.

The top row of glyphs, that runs all the way around the box, were modeled after Rosicrucian "name" seals, where the name of an entity, usually an angel or demon, is traced out on a rose cross with letters arranged on it. The pattern created by tracing from one letter to the next in the entity's name becomes a symbol for its name. The symbols on the box are only patterned to look like "name" symbols, they have no meaning.

Inside the box is the sigil of Abn-Sur. It is a glyph of my own creation that harks back to my Stone Elder Sign disks and the mythos elements I created in my Book of Ioz. I was going to put an elder sign on the inside of the lid, but I got impatient and decided not to. I probably should have. It is the only surface that doesn't have a carving. Maybe I'll put something else there, some sort of appliqué, if I can think of something cool.

The glyph on the bottom of the box is another one of my own creations. I pulled it from my Necronomicon Pages.

I set these "name" glyphs to straddle the seam between the lid and the body of the box, all the way around, so that they would serve as a sort of "seal" to contain whatever is inside.

I also purposely made a few of the glyphs wrap around from one side to the next, giving some of them three dimensions and implying that the physical dimensions of the box itself are not a limitation to the powers that seal the box.

After carving the symbols with the dremel, I colored them in with a sharpie marker, because that makes them look old and dark, like they have collected the dust and grime of centuries. Then I stained the whole thing with a dark mahogany wood stain. After staining, I banged the sides and edges with a small hammer to make it look older and distressed. Then I finished it off with several coats of tung oil. I didn't want to leave it without a finish top coat, but I thought polyurethane would kill the authenticity.

The box itself is pretty much done, but I still haven't figured out what I'm going to put into it yet, thus the project remains incomplete. Let me know if you have any suggestions.

Purple BoS with Silver Pentagram

A few months ago I made this blank Book of Shadows. It was done using the paper and glue covering method used on previous projects. It started out as one of the blank sketch books I used for the Puffy Paint books. I added chipboard to the covers and spine to bulk them up. The techniques used for this book aren't anything new, but I did get a little more creative with the design elements. I used chipboard to create the border and the moon phases on the front and back. To create the star on the back, I used two different thicknesses of cardboard (chipboard and "shirt box"). It made for a nice 3D effect.

The whole thing was covered in glue and brown paper and then painted with black tempura paint, and sponged with purple acrylic paint. It was then dry brushed with silver. The pentagram on the cover was made from chipboard and spray painted with flat black and dry brushed with silver, with a little silver rub-n-buff thrown in for good measure.

Like I said, nothing new here, just thought you might like to see it. I had it for sale in my shop for a few days, but my sales clerk decided she wanted it. She is planning on making it into a companion book for one of her favorite tarot decks.

Pentagram Altar Box with Mirror lid

Well, I've been busy spending time with my daughter for the past two months, but now she's back in school, so I can start getting back to my usual distractions.

Here is a little portable altar box I made recently. It is one of several I have made over the past few years. The box itself is one of those pre-build unfinished boxes you can get at the craft store. I drew the pentagram on the top of the lid and carved it out a bit with the dremel. Then I dyed the wood in the pentagram with a sharpie marker before using a mahogany wood stain on the rest of the box. I put three coats of clear poly on it and then added the brass corner pieces at the bottom to act as feet. Although the feet are glued on, I wanted to put brass nail heads over the holes where the screw/nail would go, but I couldn't find any brass brads with big enough heads short of upholstery tacks, which I thought would look terrible,so in the end I left them empty.

The interior bottom is lined with blue velvet and the interior of the lid features a built in black scrying mirror. The glass was hand cut (my first time using a glass cutter :) and blackened with my patented secret process to make a nice shiny black mirror (well, not actually patented, but it is secret and I'm not going to tell you). The edges of the glass were sanded and then wrapped with copper foil tape (the kind used for making stained glass). The glass makes the lid a little heavy compared to the rest of the box. I had to make two mirrors for this box. The first one was a little smaller and had to be taken out because the type of glue I used caused imperfections in the black backing.

New Necronomicon Pages (sets 6 & 7)

Sorry I haven't made a post recently. I've been spending some time with my daughter during the summer. I'm also a lazy sod, as evidenced by the fact that these new Necronomicon Pages were laid out in January and have just now (7 months later) come out of production and are ready to sell.

I've been wanting to create some new sets for a while now, but it always seems to get pushed back on my list of things to do. These pages feature more artwork by ZARONO. These are images that I've had for quite some time, but hadn't used yet (again, because I'm too lazy to lay out new designs). I am starting to run through all the images that he sent me all those years ago, but fortunately I have found some new sources of public domain images on-line. I should probably start working on sets # 8 & 9 while I'm in the mood. Maybe then I can have them in production in time for Christmas.

If you're one of the many people who have been waiting for these pages to come out, they are for sale now on eBay.com and Etsy.com. I usually only sell one of each set at a time, but never fear, I have several copies of these new sets made, and I will be posting them over the next few weeks.

My Ouija Board (WIP)

Many years ago (around 1992), three friends of mine got together and started playing around with a Ouija board. They supposedly contacted a spirit who gave them several very explicit instructions, including instructions on how they should go about creating their own custom made Ouija board (to better communicate with him). The spirit was very explicit in his instructions, right down to the kind of wood that should be used for the project.

They followed the spirit's instructions (on several topics), and began construction on their custom boards. They bought a single piece of high grade hardwood plywood (of the type specified by the spirit) and divided it into fourths. The three of them each took one piece to make their own boards. Though I was not involved in their sessions with the spirit (I was told the tale afterwards), they offered the fourth piece to me.

My recollection of the details may be a little fuzzy from all the years that have passed (and there is no guarantee that what I had been told was in fact the truth), but as I recall, one board was completed and used several times. The second may or may not have been completed, and the third was not completed and may have never been started. I'm pretty sure I only ever saw one of the three boards personally. It was of a fairly standard design, which was also specified by the communicating spirit. One thing I am fairly certain of, is that all three of those boards have since been destroyed. My friends, fairly soon on, had a falling out with the spirit in question.

Mine is the only board still in existence. It has also never been finished. As I was not a party to the communications with this particular spirit entity, and was thus not following any directions for its construction, I decided to make some radical changes to the typical design. I began by making a round board with an underlying pentagram that would serve as a containment circle for whatever spirits might be evoked. I planned on combining eastern and western symbolism into the design, using Chinese characters at the points of the pentagram (though I mistakenly used the character for "ghost" instead of "spirit"), and a Yin & Yang symbol at the center for Yes/No, Hello/Goodbye, etc. I intended to use the Enochian alphabet in a circle of disks, which would encompass a smaller ring of disks containing the Arabic numerals 0-9. The outer circle of the pentagram would be inscribed with my personal magickal creed in Theban script. These were all painted on by hand with artist's oil paints.

I worked on the board on and off from 1992 through 1994, then because of several moves, it was packed up and was never completed. It has since been sitting around, unfinished. I do expect to work on it again some day, and it may actually be completed at some point, but I have no intentions on ever using it. I'm just not that into Ouija boards for spirit communication. I prefer to divine using tarot cards.

Lamp Shade

Just a very quick note about this little piece of back-catalogue. This is a lamp shade that I made for the store's grow-light a few years ago. Like I mentioned, I can't keep plants alive for more than a few weeks, so I eventually gave up on the indoor plants, and the grow light, and so the lamp shade was retired.

It was made from a plain craft paper lamp shade that I got from the craft store. I used a hammered metallic black spray paint on it. Then I cut out holes in random locations using a 50 cent piece as a template. From the underside, I glued pieces of colored cellophane over the holes. Then, I glued large river-stone shaped clear glass disks over top of the holes. I finished it off by drawing a leaf and vine pattern over the surface with black glitter puffy-paint. It looks quite nice when it is lit up, buy I'm not going to bother setting it up to show you.

Our Garden

Well, it's not exactly the kind of creation I usually post about here, but I did make it, sort of.

I usually have a black thumb. I can kill snake plants, all manner of house plants and even aloe vera. The only thing I have ever had much success at growing was mugwort (which by all accounts is a weed). This spring, my daughter and I decided to plant a garden in the empty lot next to my house. We had some spare bricks lying around, so we made raised beds. The soil in the lot was all rock and ash (at least it looks like ash), so we brought in bags of top soil to doctor it. We planted tomato seeds (which didn't come up, so we replaced them with seedlings), sunflowers, pumpkins (the kind that make 200 pound gourds), watermelons (again, the largest ones we could find), green peppers (which also didn't come up, and were replaced by seedlings), cucumbers, radishes, cantaloupe, green beans, yellow beans, lettuce, and carrots. In all we made five beds. My daughter and I are very excited about how well things are going so far. I'm still not holding my breath that we will be able to harvest anything, but at least there is something growing.

I won't post a bunch of pictures of plants here, that's not what this blog is for, but if you are interested here is a link to my "garden blog". My daughter is out of state visiting relatives for a few weeks and I promised her I would post pictures of the garden so she could monitor its progress. Enjoy.

Notorious B.I.C.

The Notorious B.I.C. (Big Inflatable Cthulhu) was created in the summer of 2005 as a replacement for the retired BSP. As with its predecessor, it turned out nothing like the original concept. It began its life as a vintage olive drab nylon army surplus parachute that I purchased off of eBay. I had not seen a real parachute since I had been in kindergarten. I remembered them as being big, but I figured a lot of that was due to the fact that I was very small at the time. Not so. My mother and daughter and I took it out to a parking lot to open it up so I could get a visual idea of how much material I had to work with, and how the seams ran. Holy crap, this thing was HUGE! We couldn't even get it completely opened up, because the wind was starting to take hold of it, and it was easy to see that the three of us were going to have a problem keeping it under control if we got more than a slight breeze. It was nearly dragging us across the parking lot at the smallest gust.

My original design was along the same lines as what the BSP was supposed to have been (which should have been an omen). Actually, it would have looked a lot like my Cthulhu Snowman sculpture. I guess my imagination likes to get it's moneys worth out of a design idea. It was supposed to have a round body, topped by a round head with face tentacles. Then there would be arms and legs, hopefully with fingers and toes this time, attached to the side of the body. Over all, it would have looked a lot like those snowman blow up lawn decorations, but green, and Cthulhu. The body came together fine (which should have been another omen). Actually, the seams of the parachute worked to my advantage. I t was basically a big sphere. I held the seams together with safety pins and installed a large box fan at the rear seam to inflate it while I conceptualized the rest of the build. Once inflated, it filled up the entire basement of my mother's house floor to ceiling. It looked like a giant green pumpkin. I had left an opening at the top for airflow. This would allow air to fill the head segment.

Next I began work on the head. It would have also been basically a sphere, so it should have been easy to make, but there was a problem. Every time I through the next piece of material over the top of the body, expecting the air hole at the top to buoy it up so I could shape it, the whole thing deflated. At most, I figured, I was blocking the air hole, which should have made the thing inflate more. To block that hole should have increased the air pressure inside the body. But, every time, it deflated. I tried it over and over with the same result. This was going to be a problem. How was I going to attach a head and keep the whole thing inflated? After about two days of frustration, my mother made an off handed comment as she passed by to do the laundry. "Why don't you make that the head?", she said.


I'm not the kind of person who can roll with the punches easily. I am loath to revise my design once I figure out what I want. Physics be damned. But after another day of frustration, I had to concede defeat. The deflating problem was not going to go away. I started thinking of ways I could get away with not putting another section on top of this one. That brought me back to what my mother had said. I could put my face tentacles on the body, and make the whole sculpture into a giant Cthulhu head. Not what I originally wanted, but feasible.

Now, I had to add features to this giant green pumpkin, to sell it as a Cthulhu head. I used a marker to sketch out where I wanted things like the eyes and face tentacles to go. I had planned on using darts and pleats (and other improperly named sewing techniques) to create shape. In that vein, I created a sort of pocket that ran horizontally all across the front. This would become the eyebrow. I created it around a bent pool noodle, which would fill out the brow and give a menacing scowl to the eyes. I kept the pool noodle bent to the proper curve by running a piece of string through it's center and tying the ends together to create a bow (as in bow and arrow). The design was still very fluid, so I only safety pinned the brow in place until I got things finalized. I had saved the light up eyeballs from the BSP, and planned on reusing them for this project. All I needed to do was to create a little sculpted pocket for them to rest in.

The face tentacles were a little harder to create than I had expected (isn't everything?). I decided on four large tentacles (just like my snowman sculpture!) that would come straight out of the face at around floor level. Sewing them together was difficult just due to their size. It was very hard to see what I was doing and to keep everything lined up properly. It all just looked like a giant wad of fabric. The outer tentacles were supposed to be larger than the center ones, though they did come out a little larger than I would have liked. They almost look big enough to be arms. One little innovation I snuck in during the sewing stage, was to run a piece of mason line (string) down the length of each tentacle. I'll tell you what it is for shortly. To attach the tentacles, I decided to pin them to the inflated sphere, sew them in place, by hand, then cut holes in the sphere (from the inside) to allow the air to fill the tentacles. At least that part of the plan went off reasonably smoothly, though my hand sewing leaves a lot to be desired.

Once the tentacles were in place,the basic construction was finished, sort of. I did still have to test the eyes. More on that later. So far everything was held together with safety pins, except for the tentacles' seams were sewn and they were sewn to the face. Remember that I said I cut the holes to let air into the tentacles from the inside? the rear seam of the "pumpkin" was also held together with safety pins (lots of them). If I unfastened a few near the bottom, and entered quickly, I could get inside of the thing while it was inflated. AWWWESOOOMMME!!! I get excited by things like that. And remember those strings in the tentacles? Those are for making them move. Once inside, I could tug on those strings and make the tentacles move around. MOOORRRRE AWWWESOOOMMMME! You've got to love being able to mess with people from inside a giant Cthulhu head!

I wasn't sure what kind of fan I was going to use to keep the thing inflated, and I wanted to stay flexible, so I decided to use self stick velcro to seal the back seam. This would allow me to make the opening for the fan as large or small as necessary, and would also allow easy access in case anyone wanted to get inside to work the tentacles. The top and bottom of the sphere (and part of the seam) and the eyebrow pocket are actually still held together with safety pins. I had always intended to sew them up proper, but never got around to it. Hey, they work.


Once basic construction was completed, I deflated the sculpture and drug it out to the garage and re-inflated it for painting. I started with some flat black sprat paint to give it shape and definition. I made large black patches around the eyes to give the illusion of depth. I used florescent green spray paint to give it highlights and the same iridescent sheen that the BSP had under black light. I also used some air brush paint for more subtle details, but honestly, you can't really see them, especially in a dark room.


And now for the eye fiasco. Originally, I intended to have the self contained, battery powered illuminated plastic orbs that I had used on the BSP, sitting in a pocket like fold under the eyebrow. This is basically how they sat in the BSP. It didn't take long to see that plan wouldn't work. The eyes were far too heavy, and actually a little too small for the head. Since weight was the main problem, I decided to construct something to take up the weight. I spent several hours constructing an elaborate wooden stand to hold the eyes from the inside of the head. It was a plywood base, with a 2x4 post coming up from the middle, off of which swung two movable 1x2 arms with steel plates on their tips. I intended to put the stand inside the head, point the arms to where they eyes should be, and have the eyes attached from the outside of the fabric with magnets. A very complicated solution, that worked for crap. Unfortunately, I was out of time. I had to leave for Origins the next day. I would have to somehow fix it on the fly. I was beginning to have BSP flashbacks.

Once on site, I tried again to make the magnet pole-thingy work. It didn't. Even when I could keep it from falling over, it looked like total crap. It actually looked better with no eyes, just the dark sockets. So, that's how I left it for the first few hours. Then, in the midst of my disgust, I had a brain storm. At the moment I thought of it, I thought it was a stupid idea, and that it probably would look terrible, but what was I out to try. I grabbed a spare piece of florescent orange poster board from my supplies (I always come over prepared. Ask anyone). I cut out two large circles, cropped at the top, and with a big old cat's eye slit drawn on in black magic marker. It looked like it could have been made by a fourth grader. I tucked the top edge up under the eyebrow ridge, and secured them to the fabric with a little piece of doubled over duct tape. Holy shit! They looked awesome! And surprisingly, with the black light reflected off the florescent orange, they were about ten times brighter than the light up ones would have been. Even at a distance, with the room lights low, it looked like two very large glowing eyes peering out at you from the corner. I still use those same poster board eyes.

And thus, Notorious B.I.C. came to life. He was an instant sensation. People liked him even better than the BSP. Several people figured out that you can lay on the floor in front of it, with the tentacles over you, and it looks like you are being eaten. People love to have their pictures taken that way. I should charge for it :)