Hey fiends. 😈 Harley Brimstone here, writing our first blog entry. I thought I’d kick off the blog by answering some of the questions you might have about Haus of Brimstone and the delightful devil horns we create.
Who is Haus of Brimstone?
Haus of Brimstone is a small team located just outside of Austin, TX. We make all of our horns from scratch right here in our studio!
- Harley Brimstone (that's me!) is our founder, and day-to-day I handle things like our website, staffing, and creative direction.
- Bambi Bloodmoon is our sculptor and studio artisan, executing most of the digital and physical hornsmithing.
- We have additional help from the secretive “M” cleaning prints and adding threaded inserts (their true identity remains hidden in the shadows).
- Cherish helps with office administration and shipping, while Irene S. handles words, organization, chaos & miscellany.
- Mr. Brimstone offers moral support, imp wrangling, and all-purpose demonic husbandry.
- The incomparable Synth Babes, Sabor Insanity & Lady Marionette, handle our rapidly expanding social media (you’ll also catch them modelling on our site!)
And of course, we have help from a lot of community members with vending, modelling, photography, and more. You can read more about our infernal team on our About Us page.
Community members? What community?
Haus of Brimstone is intimately connected to the local Austin, TX burlesque & pole dance community - we have been providing horns to local performers since our inception.
Before Haus of Brimstone, Irene and I co-produced the Austin burlesque production company Velvet Nox Productions (which Irene continues to produce to this day!) and many of our cohorts and customers are burlesque, drag, and pole performers (myself included!)
How did you get started making horns?
About that. There are strange and mysterious gaps in my memory, caused either by sulfurous vapors or possibly staring at an eldritch scroll not meant to be seen by mortal eyes, but here’s how I remember it:
In the winter of 2019, I was planning an elegant pink devil act for a student showcase at the Austin Academy of Burlesque. I was on the hunt for a lightweight, beautiful pair of horns that I could wear directly on my forehead.
Despite extensive searching, I couldn't find any horns that were lightweight but also fit the elegant succubus look I was going for. The pair I ended up using for the performance were cute, but heavy. They attached using clear stretchy beading cord, which unfortunately could be seen up close. And because they were so heavy, they actually came away from my forehead a bit when I spun around in my performance! 😭 I was (and am) still happy with how the look came out, but this set some storm clouds rumbling in the back of my mind.
An undetermined while after this, Mr. Brimstone acquired a CNC routing table, and I said “Let’s make a pair of horns on that thing!” A really, really heavy pair of solid wood succubus horns later, we decided to try out 3D printing as a better method.
On an FDM printer (which works with technology similar to a hot glue gun), we printed out a pair of wood-particle-infused horns (a thinner version of what would later become our Incubus horns). Then I sanded and spray painted the horns, and jankily hot glued them onto a headband just in time for Dame Dynamite’s “Alter Ego” event here in Austin.
Update: in the process of researching this blog, I discovered a Discord message to Irene S., as follows:
"Dude. I'm gonna make horns with the cnc machine" -4/19/2021. So, sulfur-baked memory officially defeated!
At another mysterious point lost to time (miasmatic haze, fog of war, etc.), after briefly testing and ruling out a molding & casting process, we switched over to resin 3d printers, which allow us to get the delightful fine details and glossy smoothness you see on our devil horns now. It's true that resin printers are more difficult to work with, but those gorgeous details make it worthwhile!
So the horns are 3D printed resin - what else goes into making them?
A lot goes into them! Here’s roughly what the process looks like:
- Concept: Bambi and Harley work together to come up with the idea for the horns, collect reference images, and choose a direction from Bambi's beautiful concept sketches.
- Sculpting: Bambi digitally sculpts the horns and does revisions with Harley's input, doing test prints along the way, until the sculpt is perfect (demonically perfect).
- Printing: Once the sculpt is finalized, and any printing issues are resolved (adjusting supports, thickness, etc.), we begin production prints of the horns.
- Cleaning & Inserts: After printing, M cleans the horns and adds threaded inserts which allow our horns to be attached to any of our horn attachment accessories (headbands, barrette clips, catacombs, etc.).
- Painting: Bambi beautifully paints the horns with a combination of media using her background in fine arts, based on her concept art and her finely tuned artistic intuition.
- Drying: Lastly the horns are left to dry, after which they are ready to become your infernal crown!
Sometimes the process is a little different - for example, I sculpted our initial imp and incubus models before we started working with Bambi. Other times, Bambi will take a rough sculpt sourced elsewhere and turn it into something glorious (as in the case of our Tiefling horns.) And occasionally, we will license a sculpt entirely created by another artist.
But this is generally how the mischief is made!
I hope this answers the burning questions you never had and gives you a little bit more insight into the inner workings of our Haus.
If you have any more questions, feel free to drop me a line directly at harley@hausofbrimstone.com or contact us on our contact form.
Until next time,
See you in hell!
🖤 Harley Brimstone
1 comment
Obviously I have to test out the comment section on my own blog.