Ghoulish Gargoyles

A few weeks ago we took a weekend trip up to Asheville, NC to tour the Biltmore House.  I thought I’d share a few photos of the gargoyles and ghoulish decorative features on the Vanderblit's Mansion.

Architecturally gargoyles were designed to take water away from rooftops over to the sides of a building to prevent rainwater from eroding the walls; used before gutters were around. 

Gargoyles on churches may have been intended to convey the idea of evil and used to scare people into coming to church by signifying the end times were near.  They also may have conveyed that evil was to be kept outside the church.

Other ghoulish figures:

The Bilmore House took six years to complete and was finished in 1895: 

It was a great trip even Stella enjoyed it!



  

A Classic Tale of Horror Makes a Wicked Black and White Pumpkin

Okay guys, I'm really not into crafts but when I ran across these brown paper craft pumpkins in a Goodwill bin last weekend an idea came to mind.

Why not use pages from a favorite classic horror novel to make a unique pumpkin for the season.  So, I printed out a few pages of Shelley's, "Frankenstein" and Stokers "Dracula" from www.free-ebooks.net . Tore the pages into 1 or 1 1/2 inch strips, used mod podge to glue the strips into place, glued on a stem made by rolling and twisting a piece of black card stock paper, added a few layers of mod podge to the entire pumpkin (allowing dry time in between layers) and there you have it ...

   
A pumpkin with a scary story to tell :)