The Wickedly Talented Ladies of Macabre Merch: Six Questions for the Beauty and Brains Behind the Killer Shop, Demonic Pinfestation
It’s no coincidence that we are kicking off our month-long celebration of women in horror business by spotlighting Demonic Pinfestation, one of our favorite shops and shop owners. Demonic Pinfestation creates pins, stickers, prints and more inspired by horror, scream queens, anatomy, and death! Shop owner, talented artist and entrepreneur MelisSATANzer, describes Demonic Pinfestation as “Feminine Horror with a dash of blood.” MelisSATANzer started the shop in November, 2015, and has made a name for herself in the pin collector community for her truly unique and stunning works of art, her passion and creativity, and (perhaps most importantly) her tremendous support of the small business, independent artist, and horror communities.
1. What was the inspiration for starting your own business and how did you get started?
I was a collector of enamel pins before I started my own small business. When I first started, I couldn’t really find any pin makers that were focusing on the women in horror movies. The strong female roles in horror movies deserve as much recognition as their male counterparts, and I wanted to change that.
2. When and how did you fall in love with horror?
When I was around 10 years old I saw Hellraiser 3. I was completely obsessed! Paula Marshall who played Terri ( The Dreamer cenobite) was my style icon. I am an only child, so I didn’t have an older brother or sister to introduce me to these movies, and we didn’t have the Internet. The way I discovered more about horror and fell in love with it was our weekly visits to our local video rental store. I was obsessed with the horror VHS art. With it would come weekly arguments with my mom about which movies we were going to rent. I always won those arguments!
3. Where does inspiration for your products come from? What is your creative process like?
Scream Queens, Halloween, death, the macabre, anatomy, and oddities inspire me the most. Night Of The Demons is what inspired me to start a pin company. “Is My Makeup Okay?” was my very first pin and the name Demonic Pinfestation comes from when Angela says, “The noise, the stink and the chill! They’re all signs of demonic infestation.”
As far as my creative process goes, I light all of my candles, sit in the middle of my room in a circle of rotting corpses and call upon Lucifer to bring me the darkest most evil pin ideas! I drink the blood of little children and start drawing! Orrr I just watch the movie I am inspired by and get ideas from that and start drawing!
I was drawing everything with pencil and paper, inking it, and then running it though illustrator for the last 2 years, but I recently entered the future and acquired an iPad, so I save a lot of time and paper now!
4. What’s the best part about running your own business, and what’s the hardest part?
The best part about running your own business is being your own boss witch and not having to answer to anyone but yourself. I never did well working for someone else. I always felt so trapped and switched jobs way too often…and I was never happy. I knew if I didn’t start something up of my own I would completely fail because I know I would never make it working for someone else.
The hardest part is staying disciplined. I don’t have a social life, which is fine because I am such an introvert anyway, but this is seriously 24/7 for me. I don’t mind because I absolutely love what I am doing and I am so grateful for it every single day. This has drastically changed my life for the better.
5. Tell me why you think it’s important for people to support small business? Is it especially important for people to support female-owned business (if so, why)?
It’s so important to support small businesses because there is so much more love and care and most likely blood, sweat and a ton of tears that goes into our products. You can find so many rad things that you wouldn’t be able to find at your local mall that 10 billion people already own.
I do feel it’s important to support female owned businesses because we work fucking hard! We are so proud to be a female owned small business in the horror community amongst so many amazing female small business owners. We definitely look out for each other. We also get a ton of support from the guys in the horror/pin community.
6. How can people follow/interact with you on social and purchase your products? And is there anything else you’d like to add or promote?
I work a lot with another amazing female owned horror business called Creeper Crate! It’s a monthly horror subscription box for women who love horror! I am honored to be featured in her boxes and be able to work with such a hard working ghoul. You can find me on Instagram and Facebook @demonicpinfestation and my shop can be found at demonicpinfestation.bigcartel.com.
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