So cute! This wonderful tillandsia ionantha is happily set upon a bed of lime green reindeer moss, which reminds me of a mad scientist's evil concoction. It looks quite lovely in its 50 mL glass beaker home, and will add interest to your home or office decor! Simply submerge the air plant in water 1-2 times per week and return to the glass once drip dried. Provide bright light without direct afternoon sun and your air plant will reward you with constant greenery and intermittent blushes of pink leaves, signalling flowers are on their way! Plants may or may not be in bloom at time of shipment. Beaker and plant assembled measure about 4" tall and 3" in diameter. This will be carefully packaged and will ship USPS priority mail with delivery confirmation. Plant will apart from beaker to protect the delicate nature of this creature.
These are actually genius.
"I-Zombie" brings us this beautiful piece of Strickfaden-style laboratory gear. The prop was assembled from acrylic tubes mounted on a vintage electronics case. The detailing and final finish work is excellent.
In the home stretch to Halloween now and I'm trying to plan my attack on the interior and buffet spread. (Nope, I haven't done a thing yet - I have a very busy Saturday ahead of me.) So what better time to share a few inspiring spreads that others have managed to pull off beautifully? And if you have others inspiring ideas, don't forget to leave them in the comments. I need them! I'm so excited to share what John and Andrew, the dynamic duo behind STUDY shared with me this week. They were kind enough to send over some snaps of their mad scientist party from last year. I'm in love with the whole look. Not only did they pick a fun concept and really commit to it, they created a fabulous backstory (hello? we are kindred halloween spirits!) to go along with it. Rather than me going on about it, I'll let them give you the deets. As you probably gathered, we're big proponents of the "themed" party. Last year we decided to go for a mad scientist theme, but we didn't want to just go for generic laboratory with crazy-looking specimens lying around. Our process always starts with, who's the person we're trying to tell a story about? Last year that person was a brilliant scientist who - after years of not receiving recognition from his peers AND a botched love affair that may or may not have ended in murder - has holed himself up in his crumbling manse where he continues to conduct his increasingly deranged experiments… in between still holding dinner parties for fellow mad scientist cohorts. The living room acted as our scientist's own living room, but also his de facto lab where he keeps specimen jars, x-rays and anatomical charts. For the mantle we purchased a few oversized jars, filled them with cabbages and twigs submerged in water, and backlit them with two florescent blacklight bars. Your average highlighter glows under blacklight, so to achieve the glowing jar effect we cut open a few highlighters and drained them into the water we used to fill the jars. If you want to try this out it's important to wear gloves and protective clothing as this tends to get everywhere. When draining the highlighter's filament, have a large bowl of some kind under your tap and keep the water going at just a trickle. The x-ray boards were made by taping actual x-rays to the back of our bookcase doors with black electrical tape and then emptying the cases and placing two lamps inside each. Our bookcases allowed for this setup, but you could also use battery-powered lanterns and then you don't have any cords to worry about. X-rays are also fairly easy to come by at medical surplus stores and on ebay, but try not to get too freaked out when you realize that you're holding in your hands another person's real medical drama. Adjacent to the living room, our scientist has his formal sunroom, where he can look out and spy his next victims guests. The chandelier was made from a typical brass chandelier you'd find lying around any Salvation Army. These are easy to find at thrift stores and really, the wonkier the better since you want it to look a little "off". We spray painted the chandelier and a few twigs black, then affixed the twigs to the chandelier with black electrical tape. Everything got another coat of spray paint. Black tapers were secured to where the sockets would have been and further secured with wire. We should caution that if you do use candles, this thing has to be watched at all times. You could also use battery-powered flicker candles and then you've got nothing to worry about. Our theme continued into the hallway where the incandescent bulbs were replaced with florescent blacklight bulbs. Surprisingly these were the absolute hardest items to find. There were some some sort of shady storefronts online that sold florescent blacklight bulbs, but they were usually overpriced. We ended up finding them in, of all places, a Walgreens. They even let you check each store's inventory online! The bathroom became the aviary, where our mad scientist studies birds that fly in from time to time. The story goes, he didn't intend to have an aviary, but when a tree began to grow up through his tub, well, he just went with it. All the better for us. The "tree" growing in through the tub was from a huge branch that blew down onto our garage the previous summer. Dried leaves filled in the bath, string lights were roped along the branches and fabric birds were wired to the branches. The overall effect ended up being not so much scary, but more magical and made us want to live there forever. We're still sad that the tree had to come out, but bathing sort of necessitates that. Finally, the dining room is where the mad scientist lays out a spread fit for a deranged academic. We used cheesecloth, lots of inexpensive brass candle holders spray painted black and black tapers to bring the whole look together. There was a lot of prep time involved in bringing this party to life, but it was also a ton of fun every step of the way. Most of all, we whole-heartedly advocate throwing your own mad scientist-themed shindig in the near future.
Checkout one of the oldest terrarium gardens in the world! Read the story of David Latimer's sealed bottle ecosystem from the 1960's.
Turn your front porch into an evil lab with these creative and budget-friendly mad scientist Halloween decorations. Great ideas!
Easy ideas to transform any room into a mad science laboratory with a few props.
Essentially the same set as before, but now with 3-D walls and some proper flooring... and extra set dressing. The walls were a lucky fluke; blue styrofoam with dremelled lines... but the grey primer spray just randomly ate away at the surface enough to give a cool stone surface effect.
Just getting a feel for how I'm going to do my establishing-reveal dolly shot to open the film. The lights are 'Raver accessories' - you're supposed to attach on to each finger when you're dancing all whacked up on the 'E'. I think I'll have to get more, they're pretty cool and you can tuck them away into tiny spaces. The lightning machine is all too obvious, but it makes nice light and motion. Also, there should be more specimen jars and less Jagermeister bottles. I think it's going to look cool in the final film though. Anyone have a Jacob's Ladder they'd loan me?
Kick Halloween up a notch with this fun Mad Scientist Halloween Party for Teens! Filled with fun and crafty DIYs and a recipe for Toxic punch!
Just what did I do now? Every mad scientist seems to have a whole rack of "things in jars". Weird shapeless organic-looking objects suspended in cloudy fluid and cryptically labeled. What are these specimens and what are they used for? Is that a finger? A bug? A cow fetus? Who care's it's creepy. Let's make one. Ingredients: 1 Large Jar - Previously contained pickles. Label removed. 1 "Specimen" Label - You can design and print out your own, but propnomicon has a free, and very official looking one ready to go that I'll be using here. 1 "Thing" - This is where you can get pretty creative. It needs to be creepy, vaguely shaped, and preferably have as many tentacles as possible. Original label created by: propnomicon Labeling the label After printing, and cutting out a specimen label I then use a regular ball point pen to fill it out (I would have used a fancier pen but it's all I had on hand). I'd advise against using a non-waterproof felt tip pen or a sharpie as the ink may "bleed" too much during the aging process. The label by design will mostly be illegible. But I'd like to leave a strong adjective or two at least somewhat readable to keep people guessing. So think of words you usually see in a chemistry lab like: "Highly", "Caution", "Warning", "Corrosive" etc. Aging the label For some reason these jars are almost always really old. Who knows maybe they just came with the lab so they're more for evil scientist ambiance. Some people collect commemorative plates... some the ancient embalmed remains of unborn plaxidalian snot-vipers... who am I to judge? I've soaked the label in a cup of tea and coffee grinds for about 20 minutes. I then dry the label rapidly with a heat gun, crumple it up after it's dry, then repeat the process once more. After that I used an ordinary glue stick to affix the label to the jar. To deter late night snacking replace your cookie jar with one of these. But we're not done yet. Yes it looks kinda old right now, but we need to really simulate the wear an tear of years sitting on the world's most disturbing looking spice rack. For that we'll be sanding the corners and random areas around the lettering with fine sandpaper. To finish I applied a couple of drops of the coffee/tea mixture to a few areas and dried it quickly with the heat gun. This allows the glue to soak through the paper a bit more and naturally add to the discoloration. Ask your doctor if "thing in a jar" is right for you. Now all we need is a "thing" Here I've taken scraps of clay, wire, foil, wood bits, hot glue, and a cork to shape out the "thing". Basically I just took anything that was lying around on the floor of my workshop and fashioned it into whatever you'd call this shape. Weird but not very menacing. I then cover the thing in a mixture of liquid latex and coffee grinds (for texture). OMG! IT SHOULD NOT BE! KILL IT WITH FIRE! Now that this thing is sufficiently gross we're going to prime it and paint it a base color. Priming should help give us a clean slate in which to paint a fleshy pink base. I've named this color "Krang from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle's Pink". Now we add some shade, accents, and highlights to this monstrosity. To finish I glued on a few random strands of wig hair and painted on a creepy eyeball. If they ever make a horror movie about evil tape worms I could really make some money off this. Then again I think that's sort of what the Alien(s) franchise has boiled down to for years. The latex and paint job can probably hold up to being submersed in fluid but just for some added protection I've given it some gloss sealer. This only adds to it's already disgusting wet sticky look. The preserving fluid At this point the left over bilge water I clean my brushes with would probably work fine, but in an added twist we're going to make the fluid black light sensitive. This involves sacrificing a highlighter, and squeezing the florescent ink from the felt tube into the water. Because maybe it's a radioactive "thing"... and I haven't made this project creepy enough yet. I don't think "make your dorky weird hobbies glow in the dark" is listed as one of the intended uses of this standard piece of office equipment, but it works. Topping off: The jar's screw on lid should prevent the contents from evaporating, but lets face it I don't want to open this jar EVER again for any reason. So I'm going to super glue it shut. After that we'll be sealing the top with wax from an old candle. The wax was harder to work with then I expected, but I didn't exactly make it easy for myself by trying to use a heat gun to melt the candle over the jar on the fly. I probably should have done this the old fashioned way and melted the whole candle down at once by slowly melting it in a pot. It did produce some funky wax dribblings down the sides though. To finish everything off we ever so lightly hit the whole project with little white, gray, and black spray paint to simulate dust/age. Never eating pickles again... IT'S LOOKING AT ME! I wonder. If you poured in a can of your favorite energy drink would you get the same effect? I'm ready for my close up Notes: This endeavor was originally inspired by a walkthrough on propnomicon. Check it out theres all sorts of good stuff over there. Using the heat gun on the latex coffee grinds combo produces the smell of French Roast with a touch of ammonia. You can combine latex with all sorts of things in order to make funky textures. Really should have painted/primed the jar lid white. I spent quite a while trying to get enough wax on there to hide the bright blue lid, and even then had to resort to some paint. As an alternative to the wax you might be able to find a piece of burlap or rough cloth and tie it around the jar lid with some rough twine. It'll make it look like the thing in the jar needs to "breathe" a bit. Nasty things like these have probably survived a lab fire or two. So as an alternative to aging the label you can try burning the edges of the paper. I'd also like to do some testing with getting the ink to run in a controlled manner. So the label would be smudged just enough to hide it's secrets. Great use of a "thing in a jar" in the original Japanese version of One Missed Call. A little too intense to make it into the American remake.
Mad Scientist Shrink Ray: What mad scientist's laboratory is complete without a Shrink Ray? Answer: None. So whether you just need to make all of your worldly possessions fit inside a matchbox, or bring your enemies down to size, you need a Shrink Ray. …
These pictures of a mad scientist's laboratory were taken at a plant nursery. That's right: a plant nursery that does a haunt! Couldn't you just swoon with happiness?! The beautiful Roger's Gardens, located at 2301 San Joaquin Hills Rd, Corona del Mar, California, completely decorates one of their buildings, which then is open to the public during regular business hours in September and October. They create a different haunt theme each year, publishing the full backstory on their website and on mail-outs when the building is ready. Note that it is not a traditional haunt, but rather a store with many large, extremely detailed "haunt displays" (with sound effects!) that are right in the center of things, allowing you to touch the objects and become fully immersed in the backstory. That is, if you can ignore the nearby shelves, urns and baskets spilling with Halloween goodies that are actually for sale! They even sell Bucky skeleton parts at very reasonable prices. It's my heaven, and I sooo look forward to going each year. Here's some more pics from 2009's depraved-magician's-basement theme:
Here is my Model #2 Frankenstein/Mad Lab bubbler prop. On this unit, I used two 4 inch tubes rather than four 2 inch tubes like I did on the bubbler I
