Boogervampire.com: the Art of Mary J. Hoffman

A little laboratory for me to display and share my adorably macabre creations with the world.

The Crypt of DOOM started in 2009 as a way for me to get my personal art work out into the world, but primarily it’s a labor of love and my hobby. As stated in my bio, I’m a professional animator, meaning I help make cartoons for a living. I’d like to say I do it for “kids”, but in actuality I do it for adults. For the last 5 years I’ve worked on two very popular adult Cartoons. One on Cable and one on regular network television. I opened the shop as a way to force myself to not get caught up in my day job and continue to make artwork for myself. . . and if other people found it appealing, rock on.

I initially started posting my paintings in the shop. Then I decided to try my hand at making custom designed aprons. Although the aprons were fun to make they were exceptionally time consuming and the price I was (am, when I make new ones) required to ask for each totally custom piece lead me trying new things.

Next on the chopping block of things to try was shrink plastic jewelry and charms. Early in my career I worked for a kid’s website called Neopets. They use a computer program called Flash and all the images we made for the site were very tiny. Because of this experience I knew I’d be able to make some pretty interesting designs, shrink them, and have them still look good. I first started out trying some cupcake designs (3 of the original 4 can still be found in the shop) and moved on to other monster foods. Once I perfected my technique, I decided to make some charms and earrings based on one of my all-time favorite things, Sugar Skulls!

Since the introduction of the sugar skull line, the Crypt of DOOM has gotten quite a bit of attention. People come for the Sugar Skulls and stay to look at all my other monsters!

Process:

My process is relatively simple, and very ‘handmade’. (Not that others processes aren’t. After all, it’s Etsy. It’s all supposed to be handmade.)

For my charms, earrings, necklaces, hair clips and occasional bracelets or magnets, I sketch out and create my images in the computer (Flash) and then print them out on shrink plastic. It takes a couple days to finish each item, but I then bake them, seal them and then attach any findings that are necessary. Sometimes it takes longer if I’ve got a deadline at my day job, but for the most part they have relatively quick turnaround times.

Most paintings you’ll find in the shop were either painted in acrylic paint on stretched canvas, or gouache (an opaque watercolor paint) on watercolor paper. I’m a stickler for presentation so most paintings either have finished edges for easy hanging or have been framed.

The prints you’ll find in my shop have been printed by myself at home on my computer. I have a higher end Epson printer that I use print the images and print them on Epson watercolor paper. Epson states that using the printer in combination with their paper does create archival prints that are tested to go with out fading for up to 100 years.