Horror Huggies

Horror Huggies

Sunday, April 13, 2014

Just Add Skulls!


Back when I was first starting out as a creepy toy maker, I learned very quickly that the best way to make an interesting and faintly disturbing looking toy was to remove it's head and replace it with a skull. It's incredibly simple and not terribly imaginative, but the results are always fun to see. This particular rabbit I won at a carnival/rave that was being held one warm summer night, on the deck of an old battle ship in Salem Massachusetts. Fire jugglers, glow in the dark wands, face painting stations, and scores of people dancing and grinding underneath two enormous tank barrels! I popped a balloon with a dart on my first try and won the aforementioned rabbit, whom I immediately named Raziel.

 About a month or so later, I was on my way to a Halloween party, for which I had been asked to bring some of my toys for decoration, and as I was packing a few popular favorites, I found Raziel sitting next to one of the many plastic skulls I had recently bought (I stock up on them every year around Halloween) So I quickly grabbed my scissors and my glue gun and within 10 minutes I had new and improved Raziel.




Smiley

("Smiley" 2013, fleece and aluminum)

"Hello Clarice."

This was a custom bear, made for a friend of mine who is a particularly large fan of the Batman villain, Joker.
This is far from the first toy I've made with sharp aluminum teeth. Pointy metal jaws used to be a staple in all my toys. I stopped using it as much, not because it was unsafe (there is no sweeter irony than making a cuddly toy that can not be cuddled) but because the only way to get aluminum teeth to stick to a bear is with a hot glue gun, and since many of the teeth I made were quite small (unlike this example) it was VERY tricky to glue the teeth in place without getting glue stains all over the fabric. Of course, the toys I make do have a sort of hand-stitched quality to them and that's completely intentional, but glue stains on fabric is much different than sloppy stitching, or button eyes, or torn and patched fabric. There's something artificial and tacky about glue stains.

Anyway, Smiley here is one of my absolute favorites and incidentally, has no glue stains. He's made of fleece which is a great fabric for making toys if you ever feel like giving it a try. It is not only soft and easy to sew, but it's surprisingly firm and holds it's shape, which is why Smiley's grin holds so well on his face.

Remember kids,
Smile and the world smiles with you.

Dragon Slayer

("Dragon Slayer" 2014, Photoshop)

Every time I look at this picture, Whitney Huston's iconic "I Will Always Love You" starts playing in my head... not the whole song of course just the main chorus.


I don't really have much to say about this picture. It's just a fun, silly illustration I thought you would all enjoy.