HALLOWEEN VIDEO

Here's a quick video I took friday night. It's kind of hard to see because it's so dark but at least you can hear the sound effects in the background. We used the program Garage Band to add all our music and sounds together.

HALLOWEEN 08

Here's how everything looked once it got dark and the lights and fog machine were turned on. All the kids really got a kick out of the display. A lot of parents used our set up as a backdrop for taking pictures of their kids. We had a few scared little ones but most kids just thought it was cool and gave us advise on what we should add. Pretty funny. The weather was great and we had a huge turn out. We had a steady stream of kids from 6:30 to 9:00, and went through 4 big bags of candy. The most we've ever gone through. Everyone's comment 'Can't wait to see what you do next year', guess we'll have to keep adding on. Only 364 days till next year.

SETTING UP

All we've got left to do is stretch some spider webs. It'll all look great at tonight when it's lit up.

TRICK-OR-TREAT

LAST OF THE PROPS

I finally finished everything up this evening. The scythe blade is made out of 1/4" plywood and the handle is made from a large wooden dowel rod. It's actually a rod you'd use in a closet to hang clothes. It's been cut at angles and glued and screwed back together. I tied twine around the handle where you hold it and then tied on some bones (made from sculpy).

My husbands been working on light up crows. We bought a bunch of crows at Michaels, poked their eyes out, cut open the belly and added red LED lights. This only works if the bird is hollow. That way you can tuck all the wiring and battery inside the body. You can see below what that looks like. I wanted to show how to do all the wiring but just didn't have time to document it. We've got five light up crows and three non light up crows that will be perched on the scarecrow.

GRIM REAPER

I just finished two grim reaper cloaks this evening. I used Simplicity pattern 9887. Very easy pattern. I would have loved to have made them out of wool or a distressed velvet but each one is a little over nine yards of material. Not only would that have been really expensive, it also would have been really heavy and hard to manage while sewing. I already felt like I was wrestling with just nine yards of cotton. I've got one more prop to finish. My husband was nice enough to make me a scythe out of some scrap lumber while I finished up the cloaks. All I need to do is finish painting it. I've got just 3 more days to finish everything up. Cutting it a little close this year!

GRAVE SLAB / COFFIN

Two years ago I made a bunch of headstones out of insulation foam. This year I decided to make a grave slab which turned out to tall and is now a coffin. Anyway I used pretty much the same technique with this as I did the headstones. Only difference is the headstones did not need a wood frame.

Here you can see the wood frame made out of 1x2's. Each side can be taken apart to store flat.

Then I covered the wood frame with the foam. Wood glue and a few pressure clamps is all that is needed. I could have used Liquid Nails but didn't have any. Then the fun part. I used a hot knife, looks like an exacto knife you plug in, and start to add the detailing. This knife can be found at any hardware store. I advise cutting this foam with this knife outdoors. The fumes are horrible so wear a mask. The top is not attached at all. If I want it can slide to the side to look partially opened.

I also used white caulk to fill in any and smooth out any gaps I had. this also helps hold it all together as well as the glue. Caulk also works well for adding texture.

Then I primed it with a grey primer.

Once the primer was dry I just painted it to look old. It doesn't need to look perfect. There's a lot of splattering and dripping of paint to get the look I wanted. I also ragged on some paint.

And I'm done. Any imperfections in it won't be noticeable in the dark so I'm not going to worry about them.

SCARECROW

I thought I'd show some pics of the progress of the scarecrow I've been working on this week. Please ignore the messy garage in the background. He'll stand about 7ft tall. I started just used to scrap wood left over from our deck project this past summer. The PVC tubes will hold the arms. They'll just slide inside.

I then stapled (no sewing involved) burlap to the front and back on the shoulders, sinched it around the waste and then stuffed it with plastic bags.

Then I stapled some larger pieces of scrap black material over the burlap body and then hot glued strips of black material. I didn't even cut the strips. I just ripped the material into strips.

I used the rest of the burlap material to make the head. They head is also stuffed with plastic bags. I tied a rope around his neck, used some spray paint for the eyes and yarn for the stitching down the center. I found some dead tree limbs and used those as arms. Those are what are slid into the PVC pipes. They don't need to be glued or screwed into place. This allows me to take the scarecrow apart after Halloween.

I bought a package of mesh material in the Halloween section at Walmart, this stuff can be found just about anywhere, and wrapped it around his shoulders. We're also going to add five more crows with lit red eyes, to the branches.

This is kind of what it will look like when it will be lit at night. Our scarecrow will be the main focus of our big outdoor set up this year. I'll be posting those pics as well as some other projects I'm working on for our display.

GOTTA BANANA!

Here's what I've been up to for the past couple of weeks, among other halloweeny type stuff. This is my daughters Halloween costume made from Simplicity pattern 3594. The pattern is actually for a toddler so I had to do some altering of the pattern to fit an infant. It is pretty much exactly as you see in the pattern picture. Of course after I finished it I saw a picture of one of the flying monkeys from the Wizard of Oz and wanted to kick myself for not having thought of making her a flying monkey. How awesome that would have been. DANG IT!!!! DANG IT!!! DANG IT!!! But she goes along with my circus obsession. To bad I can't put her on my shelf with my other circus toys.