Fire Burn and Cauldron Bubble...

Via Vilseskogen on Flickr.

Really Need to Get Going!

...on my Sam prop. One of the neighborhood kids stood for a tape dummy for me, and he was the perfect size for Sam, and delighted to be a part of it!


Oh, well. Maybe after West Coast Haunters Convention! Now, get some stuff into the glaze firing so I can bring 'em to WCHC; I'm flying out on Thursday, so they need to get done.


Who all is coming out to West Coast Haunters?

First Prop of 2012

One of the neighborhood boys loves my Hallowe'en display so much, he plays in the graveyard every year. Last year, I asked if he'd mind if I made a tape dummy of him, and he jumped at the chance. It was so great to see his eyes just shining and happy as he stalked around in it before I cut it off him!


Now, with any luck, I'll start feeling well enough to start putting the new prop together. In case you hadn't already guessed, it's going to be "Sam" from Trick 'R Treat.


I know some of you have already made this prop. Any suggestions on what form to use for the head? Styrofoam ball or--?

The Witch of Rose Hill-Hallows 2010

At long last, the video is done! I may do more tweaking later, but at least you can get an idea of what the Night of Nights looked like from my house. (Watch it as soon as you can, in case the soundtrack is silenced by The Man!)

Click on the pic to watch.

Update: I fixed the editing issue at the end of the video and re-uploaded it, so it should play better now.

A Few Things I've Learned About Prop Building This Season

1) No matter how perfect the humidity was for spray painting when you're almost ready to apply said spray paint, when you actually have the can in your hand and your prop before you, the humidity will rise to 110%, and therefore ruin all your hopes for decent coverage.

2) Ditto the heat index. It will rise to 110 degrees.

3) No matter how still it has been outside for the past three weeks, the instant you are ready to spray paint, 30 mph winds will blow in from nowhere. And stay long enough to put you at least seven days behind schedule.

4) Regardless of how perfect the gravestone pop-up worked during the test, the nuts will tighten to the point where, when you check your prop several hours later, you are certain the motor has destroyed itself in a puff of smoke which you, sadly, didn't witness.

5) The stirring witch project will work for everyone but you.

6) Ditto your Pepper's Ghost illusion.

7) Though you were sure you bought enough extension cords, you will be exactly one short on Halloween night. Even though you have twenty of the damn things.

8) Though you carefully checked your electrical box to verify the load before you plugged in your three fog machines, two air compressors, seven prop-1 controllers, Monster Guts Nerve Center, Flying Crank Ghost, pneumatic ground breaker zombie, and sundry other props, all circuits will blow the instant you plug in only half of these things.

9) Though you started building your props on November 1st of last year, on October 30th of this year, you will have a minimum of four props that defy all efforts at completion.

10) In spite of all your plans and successful tests, the head won't turn, the fog machine (which you know for a fact you switched on) won't run, and at least one of your spots (with the brand new bulb)will burn out-and you won't realize it until you review your pictures and video the next day.

11) The night you put out your tombstones, 50mph winds will destroy half of them, or at least pile them up in the middle of a major street, where they can be run over by the local grocery truck.

12) Though the weather report called for clear, still conditions, it will either snow or pour rain-and only for the four hours trick-or-treaters could possibly show up.

13) Some idiot will bring their three-year old to your haunt at 10:00PM. This child will get the crap scared out of them, bawl like you just killed SpongeBob, and their parent will give you the stink-eye.

14) Your neighbors will absolutely love you for it. And will thank you for all the effort you put into your haunt and the fun you brought back to the neighborhood.

Does This Tombstone Make My Butt Look Big?

This past weekend, I was overjoyed to find that I had no homework assignments due at school (Sure I had an essay to start researching, but it's not due for a couple of weeks), so I spent nearly every waking moment in the Garage of Doom, working on Beloved and other stuff. Above, Beloved has her Drylok on. I did the tea-staining step a couple of days before. In Terra's tombstone tutorial, she recommends you take a small amount of paint on your brush and dip it in water before you apply it to the tombstone. I like this approach, and I also tried something a little different, just to play around with another technique. I took a brush and wet down the tombstone, then took a brush with a bit of dark gray paint on it and swiped it over the watered area. When done right, the paint spreads over the area in a sort of watercolor fashion. The bleed looks good, you just have to keep an eye out for water drips. After I did the paint swipe, I went back over the area with a watered-down fan brush if the paint looked too dark and stripey.
A couple of days later, I started the dry-brushing part of Beloved's paint job. This is that part where you take lightly grayed paint , load your brush, wipe most of the paint off on a paper towel, and go to town. This really gives a prop dimension.
Dry-brush step: complete!One thing I am concerned about is the fact that I couldn't fit any paper towels into the holes in her hair, because I laid her hair out very closely. I can only hope that no rain gets in there and starts to melt her. That would be a major pisser.

Hand Job

I've been working on the stirring witch for what seems like forever, now. Since I'm not working, I'm trying not to spend more money than I have to, so I'm trying to make some good looking hands with what I have. Neighbor V was kind enough to sit and have a plaster cast made from her hands. I had the idea to take the casting, pour in hot glue and add wires for poseable hands that were realistic-looking. So much for bright ideas.While theoretically a good idea, this was a pretty big fail. I used vaseline as a release, and some wire lying around in the shop. Before you say it, I know they said to use thicker wire in How to Haunt Your House. I was lazy and didn't want to wrestle my wire hangers, so it's my own damn fault.I have limited experience with casting, so I expected there might be unforseen problems. I expected to have to clean up the seams, because this was plaster and not a professional silicone or rubbery mold I was using. Long story short, I had to break the cast to get the hands out, and I couldn't even pose them because the wire was wrong. Doesn't the picture look promising, though?

Oh, well. I'm sure I can paint them and have them coming up out of the ground in the graveyard. Bummer, though. The were really detailed and pretty.

Sale!

After I posted yesterday's fog machine sale, (and in honor of my 3000th hit on this blog- who knew?) I decided to go searching for more deals for you all.

Firstly, a deal from my very own little hands, direct to you through the magic of eBay: goggles. I did a paint mod on two sets of brazing goggles so they have a metallic look to them, with just a touch of rust, as if they'd been in use by a mad scientist for a long time.
This set is item #190314381732.
This one is item #190314380952. I'm also donating 10% of the sales to Second Chance Animal Rescue & Adoptions, so when you buy these, you can not only look cool, but be cool for supporting a good charity!

Skeleton Factory is having quite the sale, offering 4th quality Buckys with stand for $135.95 (without stand, $104.95), and first quality with stand for $178.95. You can also get yourself a nice dog or bat skeleton for a doggone (heh!) good deal, too.







If you have always just had to have a set of vampire or werewolf claws, now is your chance! You can get a set for $19.95 from Mostly Dead. And if you're cursed with perfect dentition, you can pick up a set of Moria Orc teeth to make yourself look really ghoulish and give your dentist fits at the same time.




What Reaper would be complete without a scythe? Trouble is, sometimes you can't find them at the local antique store when you want them, and even then, they're heavy or sometimes even inadvisable to use in a haunt setting. Enter the foam scythe from Full Moon Masks. If you can pony up the $186.95. The sale only knocks off $13 from this prop. Looks cool, though...






Lastly, for our furry brethren who are not werewolves (yet) and are being laughed at by all the cool dogs in the 'hood: They will laugh no more when your dog shows up to the graveyard for a howl in his uber-cool, very chic and sexy vampire costume from Bad Planet Costumes. Thank goodness he already comes with his very own fangs.Those pussy pit bulls will have to stand back and acknowledge him as the dominant in the pack/kiss.Let them grovel. (Suck it, Killer!) Your baby deserves a little worship once in a while!

How to Haunt Your House

Huzzah! It came in the mail! The Book!

For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about... Where have you been? Crawl out of the dungeon once in a while!

The book is How to Haunt Your House by Shawn and Lynne Mitchell. Every page is filled with ideas and pictures of various Halloween props and gags. My favorite so far is the "Pepper's Ghost" illusion, which is a great way to add a flickering ghost to your haunt. There are step-by-step instructions of sand-casting techniques (which can yield a poseable hand or a nice, spiky graveyard fence finial). There's also a recipe for Monster Mud, which seems to be a staple of the haunter's tool box. The only down side to this is if you're the frustrated English teacher type, as there are some typos and grammatical errors. (This seems to be common in the self-publishing world.)

However, the pictures are very clear, and if you're not feeling as inspired to get going on Haunt 2009 as you'd like, this book will get those juices re-animated. It's really worth the money! Pick it up here. It's not available on Amazon or at Barnes and Noble yet, but fortunately Lulu will give you a good purchasing experience.

Now, where's my hot glue?

Why?

It's funny. (Not funny, "ha ha." Funny weird.) In this day and age when money is your marker for success, and all other things seem to fall by the proverbial wayside, why on Earth would we create... Stuff?

Halloween stuff. Art stuff. Music, video, writing stuff. Stuff that "nobody" will ever see, no award given. The Academy. The Louvre. The Grammy Awards. The Nobel. The Pulitzer.

"Nobody," as in nobody "successful or important."

I mean, my dogs hardly count. My husband is smart enough to know he should say he likes my art (thankfully, he really does like it, so I consider myself lucky), but he "doesn't count." (Not in the prop appreciation department, anyway. Sorry sweetheart.)Your spouses and children and family (yes, the ones who turn on all the crazy bright lights on your carefully-lit Halloween display) "don't count." Not in a culture that worships money and beauty above all else.

So why do it?

Say it with me: L-O-V-E. Love.

When someone stood up at my friend Alan's memorial and mentioned that when you're a certain age, after you've been playing out a while, and you're not where you planned to be by now (age 35-40-45-50), that you have to decide why it is you still do it. Why? It's frustrating to be in the room with a bunch of drunks who are bellowing over your solo about the latest episode of Lost or whatever. The solo you and your buds practiced in a loop so the transition would be flawless when you played it live. You do it because you love it, because it would be like amputating a limb if you stopped doing it.

It's frustrating when what you write probably will never get to the top of that editor's pile of horrid dreck that you know damn well you are head and shoulders above.

It's frustrating when you go all out for Halloween and you only get a few TOTs, one of whom asks only why The Grumble has braces, instead of marvels at all the time you spent to make this prop for them. It's frustrating when they look at the handmade crepe paper pumpkin (full of yummy candy) you dropped in their freaking pillowcase ('cause they don't bother with actual candy buckets anymore, or spend more than ten seconds on their costumes) like you are a freak who just ripped them off. You bastard!

Ye Gods and little fishes! Why do we do it? Love. It is THE answer.

It's not like we're doing it for the money, unless we have a masochistic urge to continuously watch money flow out of our checking account.

Nope. It's because we love it.

Love is the reason we are in the garage in 100 degree heat, slaving away over an equally hot prop. Love is the reason we have hot glue scars all over our hands. It's why we drive two and a half hours to a make and take, once a month, even when gas prices are rising again. It's why we stay up until midnight on a "school night" at the beginning of October, then zombie walk through our work the next day. It's why some of us do it for our church or another charity, for free. Or why we tell our spouses never to schedule a vacation after August 15th. It's why we endure the incredulous looks when people realize we work all year for that one night: October 31.

And because of the nature of what we do, we don't have the option (and wouldn't want to, anyway)of going on strike for more pay and better medical, like some Hollywood types I could name.

Thanks to the magic of the 'net, we blog about it and find other deranged souls like ourselves. Brought together by monster mud, hot glue, and an unnatural affiliation for carpet adhesive, we share the love with each other all year, so when the condemning looks come and the neighbor accuses you of being a Satanist, you can smile and know that a mood boost is just a few steps and an Internet connection away.

We create memories for kids whose parents are too stressed and busy trying to survive to do this kind of crafting themselves. We create art, and harmless terror. Adrenaline surges and admiration. Visceral feelings, uncontrollable by our modern, logical minds.

Sounds just like love to me.

Making Stewie, Part 2

Yesterday, I began part one of how Stewie got built. I gave credit to Spookyblue for the design, and I want to mention today that he was very patient about my e-mailing with questions. Thanks, again, Spook!

On the left is a pic of the beginnings of Stewie's hatch. I stuck some foil over the hole I cut in his head and began the first of many layers of shop towels and glue to create the flap that would cover it. My first layer was just Elmer's glue (bought at Lowe's in a big jug) and water, and from there on it was shop towels and carpet glue.

At this point, Stewie had been papier mached with newspaper strips and a mix of Elmer's glue and water. I had added his ridges and bumps, some vein/vines on his chest, and a wicked grin. Now for the next step: carpet glue and shop towels.
For those of you unfamiliar with "corpsing" techniques, SpookyBlue has a great tutorial here. I want to stress how important it is for you to tear all the sharp edges off your shop towels before you use them for this. I spent an hour or so just tearing edges and creating different-sized strips before I even opened up my carpet glue. I also bought several boxes of latex exam gloves to protect myself from the sticky carpet glue.
I laid down two layers of carpet glue and shop towels, taking a toothpick to the tinier areas around the corners of his eyes and mouth to poke the shop towel around the edges. I seem to remember a lot of cursing and grumbling while I was going through this phase, as the carpet glue really does stick to everything. I went through a lot of gloves because eventually, the glue would start drying on the gloves and creating strings that would stick my fingers together. It was also the week we had 100+ degree weather, and I'm pretty certain that had an effect on the drying time of the glue.
After each layer of carpet glue and shop towel, I took a 2" chip brush (known in the industry as, "cheap brush") and painted a thin layer of carpet glue over Stewie's entire form. This is an important step, as it will prevent the texture of the shop towels from messing up your paint job (and cover up the "made" look, as opposed to creating the illusion of "grown in Hell's pumpkin patch") later on. I love chip brushes. They're perfect for this task, because once they get too gummed up, you toss them.
Once I finished that, it was time to add the stalk. I really wanted it to look very "root-y," and I needed to add some counter weight to Stewie's forward lean. I made the main stalk out of chicken wire, and after some thought, added a second chicken wire stalk down his back as a counter weight. After that, I added rolled-up newspaper wrapped in duct tape, and taped rolled-up paper towels wrapped in duct tape to the ends of those, so I had a gradual reduction in the thickness of his roots.
I added arms, made out of PVC and screwed to his shoulders. For "muscles," more newspaper. I was starting to run out of time, so after I made the hands and got them screwed on, I added several different sizes of plastic tubing to create more vine-like details on his arms. All these details got the shop towel/carpet glue treatment again. And once again, two layers, with a brushing of carpet glue in between layers.
The hands took a while to make. My husband suggested really long, root-y fingers. I had started the pumpkin patch in the front yard (alas, too late for the pumpkins to be ripe in time for Halloween) and thought this would be a great way to tie him in to the suggestion that he had grown there. Wrapping each separate finger took forever, and my fingers were sore from the duct tape attempting to yank my skin off and from wrapping each finger so tightly.
After that, it was all in the paint job.
I used exterior house paint, getting a couple of gallons of "oops," or mis-mixed paint at Lowe's and OSH in different colors for my primer and my first sponged-on layer of green. Unfortunately, nobody had the decency to make mistakes in the shades of orange I needed for my final two layers, so I had to go to Home Depot and get two quarts mixed of two different shades of orange. I chose a darker orange for my first orange layer, and then an orange several shades lighter to dry brush the highlights in. I also added a little glow in the dark paint, though it didn't show up all that well. After all that dried for a couple days, I added two layers of clear waterproofing sealant, some black feathers in his mouth to suggest he eats his crows instead of scaring them, and the terror of the pumpkin patch was done!

Making Stewie, Part 1

Some folks wanted to get a clearer picture of Stewie's creation, so I'll do a two-parter with what pics I took.


I want to give full credit to SpookyBlue, whose design I followed here. Spook has a far better tutorial than I will cover here. This will be something of a quick overview, complete with my beginner's mistakes.


I put on my thick gardening gloves and some eye protection and wrestled the chicken wire head into a roughly spherical shape. As I said before, there were a few spots in Stewie's build where I didn't quite follow the directions exactly, and this was the start. Stewie's head wound up more football-shaped than round, hence the name Stewie. Oh, well. As I said in a previous entry, I'll fix it in post. I took a few feet of 3/4" PVC pipe, drilled a hole through the pipe towards the top (leaving space to attach a stalk later) and one farther down the pipe so I could wire the chicken wire "sphere," now reinforced with duct tape, to the pipe. If I had realized at the time that I was building Stewie larger from the start, I would have chosen a thicker pipe to support the weight. I did mention SpookyBlue's tutorial was better than this one, right? We also wired a light socket with an orange fluorescent light bulb I had picked up at Walgreen's into his head for an evil flaming effect later.

At this point I rolled up more chicken wire into tubes to form breastbone and ribs, drilling holes along the pipe to run wire in order to secure the ribcage, etc. My husband came up with the great idea of taking heavy-duty cable ties rather than wire to add stability. Worked a treat! I then stuffed the ribs with newspaper and wrapped the whole lot with duct tape.

This was truly where I mixed up Spook's instructions and made the ribs way too large. In addition, the way I placed Stewie's head on the pipe (looking for a relatively good spot for his face later on), and placed his ribs created forward-heaviness as the project went on and I added more elements. If I had thought about it, I would have wrapped the ribs more towards his back.

Up to this point, Stewie had been small enough to be supported by a clamp on my workbench. Now I needed to be able to move around him as I started his layers of papier mache. I asked for my husband's input on the issue, and he came up with the idea for a bucket with a post set in cement. I got 1" PVC with the idea of sliding the 3/4" inside, but had to go back to Lowe's and get a coupler to make it work. I added wheels to the bottom before the concrete was poured, so I could move it around easier by myself.

Later, as Stewie's rapid weight gain put him in danger of face-planting almost daily, we got a galvanized tub, a 1 1/2" galvanized pipe, and a 50lb bag of concrete. The tub spread the weight out nicely and gave him a more stable platform.

I was ready to start the first layer of papier mache. For people who just want to knock out a prop fast, this is not for you. This takes time and patience, and if you focus on what you're doing, you can achieve a sort of relaxing, Zen-like state. This 

was around the time I bought a cheap stereo system from Big Lots and brought my laptop out in the garage with me to act as MP3 player and reference to SpookyBlue's site. It made the 90+ degree weather more bearable.

After I applied three layers of newspaper strips to Stewie's head and body, I cut out his eyes and mouth, going for a really big, evil, toothy grin. Then I started with real papier mache. This is an art form, and since it was my first time, there was a learning curve involved. I soon got the hang of it, doing my best to keep the mixture on the dry side. It took me a couple of days to work out where I wanted ridges and the details for his teeth, but once I had a clear picture in my head, it was pretty easy. I also used rolled-up newspaper to form ridges and duct-taped them to Stewie's head.

I made sure to cut an access hatch in the back of his head so I could change the light bulb when needed. I also made sure to continue the ridges and details I had started on the front to the back, so that he'd look finished on all sides.


More tomorrow!