Turkish artist Ebrahel Lurci returns to our pages with this wonderfully stylized Cthulhu idol.
Valraven brings us this interesting blend of cutting edge technology and old school gaff-making. Their mounted mermaid skeleton was 3D printed in high resolution, assembled, and aged. The results speak for themselves, with the bones devoid of the striations that are the mark of poor print head calibration.
I'm not sure why, but I've never connected with the Harry Potter franchise. In my circle of friends and family there are no shortage of fans. That includes my son, who has an impressive collection of both licensed and unlicensed props from the wizarding world.
Ultimately, his fandom transferred over to me in one small way- wands. I started browsing the work of wandmakers to find suitably magical holiday gifts for him. In the process, I began picking up a few for myself. The attraction is similar to the one I have for collecting Cthulhu idols. It's just cool to see all the wild variations on a basic theme.
Which brings me to this wonderfully gnarled antique maple wand from McCormick Wands. I'm not sure if the spalted effect is natural or part of the finish, but it's visually impressive either way.
Alex Libris returns to our pages with another masterful example of tomecraft. This time it's a journal bearing a cast ouroboros embossment, custom hardware, and hand-tooled leather cover.
This idol of Camazotz, the Mayan bat god, comes to us from ToT ArtStudio. The weathering is just perfect.
Silverrend Props brings us this tableaux of props from the newly remastered The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. That includes a wanted poster for the infamous Gray Fox, advertisement for the Imperial City's arena, Septim coin, and some very cool reproductions of the Varla and Welkynd stones.
The talented Karen Main returns to our pages with another of her distinctively fleshy creations. This time it's a Crown of Eyes.
Don't let their name fool you. Magnoli Clothiers is one of the premier producers of movie prop reproductions in the world. Yes, they specialize in bespoke clothing, in particular meticulously researched shirts, ties, and jackets from famous film franchises, but they do so much more than that. The One Eyed Willy's treasure map from "The Goonies" featured in this video is a good example. More importantly, at least for our purposes, it provides a master class in aging paper in less than three minutes.
1. The paper is stained brown with a light spray of tea solution and immediately dried with a heat gun. The entire process takes place on a flat working surface.
2. This is one of the very, very few cases where burning the edges of a paper prop makes sense. It's how the original screen-used prop duplicated the look of edge-browning caused by oxidation. Importantly, note how controlled the process is.
3. General dirt and grime is recreated using pastel chalks, with particular attention to the extra material caught by creases in the paper.
4. Finally, just for you closet pyromaniacs, some actual paper burning! Again, it's a very fleeting, controlled exposure to recreate the scorch marks on the original prop.
This is the way.