I saw Coraline this past weekend. It should come as no surprise that I loved it. Driving home from the theater, I pondered over the previews for the CG movies (Ice Age, Monsters vs. Aliens) and how they seemed fun, but elicited little to no excitement from me (I will confess that the [...]

Every Halloween, my elementary school music teacher would trot out a well-worn record of Saint-Saens Danse Macabre.� She’d explain the story behind the piece and then command the class to close our eyes, and listen.� It was definitely the first piece of classical music I felt I “knew.”� Since then, Halloween never [...]

My infinitely cooler-than-me friend Tim sent me this awesome Comicon-only miniature version of the uber-expensive Goliathon 83 Infinity Beam Projector Raygun (part of the Dr. Grordbort collection).� What makes it even cooler is that he had the raygun’s designer, Greg Broadmore,� sign the box!
Although lacking in the glass details of the original, the [...]

Today the postman brought me the most wonderful thing.� A print of the inside back cover of Discovering the Golden Compass: A Guide to Philip Pullman’s Dark Materials.� Want to see what the cover looks like?� Click here.� George and Tim are quite simply the best, and this unsolicited present just [...]

Edit:� The Chocolatl PDF is now up on the Chocolatl page.�
Well, actually, it’s BEEN out since late August, but I’m only now catching up enough to post about it. Two of my pieces are in George Beahm’s book Discovering the Golden Compass: A Guide to Philip Pullman’s Dark Materials. (The photos [...]

It’s official, and I must share! Two of my pieces will be in George Beahm’s newest book Discovering the Golden Compass: A Guide to Philip Pullman’s Dark Materials. George has written a variety of books that all seem to be about subjects I love! (Pirates, Harry Potter, Chronicles of Narnia . . [...]

Wow. Just wow. Toys for the new Golden Compass movie are going to be released by Corgi. Could that mean the Master Replicas will be doing prop replicas as well?
Gosh, I hope so. I’m still not that enamored of the movie Alethiometer’s symbols (I don’t think they should be in color). I’ll [...]

The H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society creates fonts and props for players of the Cthulu Lives LARP (Live-action Roleplaying Game). If, like me, you don’t play Cthulu Lives, you will instead find the site an excellent resource for early 20th century documents. I own all their prop CDs, and their font CD. Their [...]

Although my true passion is movie prop replicas, occassionally I like to venture into the realm of “book props.” They require much more imagination (because they haven’t really existed before) and a lot of research. Most of my research is done by looking at period pieces and construction methods.

Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series inspired [...]