Cast of Characters

Chose the nine creatures to be displayed this year, went with the nastier demon styled guys and also built the 9 1/2 foot tall wood under structures. On track so far (knock on wood).

Gusty

Started blocking out the back yard last week in preparation for our October 29^th open house and since this was just an exercise in finding the best location for each prop nothing was anchored.

Two days of high winds taught me to secure everything….even if it will be moved.

Nothing is broken, just needs to be set upright again…..and anchored. 

Lethal Institute

Found this illustration dated September 30^th, 1994, a combination of black marker and crayon on a large sheet of brown craft paper.

As I remember this was the game plan for our Halloween display in 1994 but after looking through boxes of old photos it became apparent that I didn’t follow through with these plans.

The yard display for that year did feature the window flats or panels and I would love to show you the photos but unfortunately 1994 is marred by overexposed and out of focus photography.

The price one payed back in the day when you actually used film to take pictures.

They looked like this:

Anyway several years later I did follow through with the concept and created a similar yard display although I dropped the “Mental Institute-Lethal Institute” theme.

The thing that strikes me most about this discovery is the fact that I didn’t start planning my display until September 30^th, only a month until the big day.

Sort of makes me long for the days when Halloween didn’t consume me 24/7.

Sort of….

A Peek Behind The Scenes

A peek behind the scenes of our Halloween 2009 setup where we battled massive rainfall, cold weather and 40 mph winds, enjoy the photos taken by my oldest son of our funfilled day (and night).

Creepy Cool

I have always loved this photo. This is the original photo, no photoshop effects added. While shooting photos of our 2006 display I neglected to lock the tilt on the tripod head and during a long exposure the camera tilted down resulting in these eerie looking green streaks. File this one under "happy accident."

Once Upon A Time

Seventeen years ago my wife and I started what would become an annual tradition of decorating our yard with an assortment of homemade Halloween props. The tradition has continued and become somewhat of a hobby or in some people’s eyes an obsession.

Found a few more photos featuring our first display.

Love this photo.

We made a couple dozen rat skeletons out of wire and papier mache then placed them into large wooden rat traps.

The Lonely Pumpkin

I stumbled across this picture from 2000 showing a huge lopsided lonely pumpkin sitting in our front yard. We didn’t decorate our yard in 2000 because our kids were at the age where they wanted to go trick-or-treating and do all the other fun stuff little kids do on Halloween. As luck would have it we won this pumpkin by guessing the weight…or I should say my wife won the pumpkin.

What are the chances? The year we don’t decorate we win a massive pumpkin, too bad because it would have looked great surrounded by props. If my memory serves me correctly I believe the pumpkin weighed around 400 pounds.

Three Spiders

Completed three new papier mache spiders for the 2008 display. Need to do some modifications of the paint such as toning down the white drybrush and adding red to the eyes.

The spiders were created with plastic grocery bags, water bottles, wire, newspaper, cardboard and broom bristles.

Pumpkin Totem

This is a photo of some papier mache pumpkins I just finished.

The jack o’ lanterns are stackable because the bottom is cut out, I thought this was sort of a cool and different way to display pumpkins.

The complete pumpkin making tutorial can be found at:

http://www.stolloween.com/?page_id=67

Spiders In The Works

Here is my inspiration for some large papier mache spiders.

A small plastic spider toy I have had for many, many years:


And here is a a partially completed papier mache version:


These spiders were designed for a papier mache class I was going to teach, but due to multiple problems with their creation I nixed the class because I felt it would be more frustrating than fun. The spider technique I’m using is still a good solid approach, it just would not work in a classroom setting.

Very quickly here are the steps. First a small plastic grocery bag was filled with crumpled newspaper until it was the desired size for the spider’s abdomen. In this case the circumference of the abdomen was 23 inches.

A full sheet of newspaper was wrapped around the plastic bag and wrapped further with masking tape. The paper and tape helped create a nice round circular shape.



A piece of heavy duty utility wire was wrapped around the paper abdomen form, a loop was formed in the wire to accommodate hanging the prop for display and for the building process.

(Note that in the photo I’ve already attached the legs, but this step should be done after the plastic bag has been stuffed with newspaper, I’m making this up as I go along so I’ve made a few mistakes.)



Next the top half of a plastic water bottle (.5L) was hot glued to the abdomen. The bottle was filled with crumpled newspaper for strength.




Additional newspaper was taped to the water bottle to “bulk up” and create the head form.



Next, long sections of 16 gauge utility wire were passed through holes created in the newspaper/waterbottle using a large awl.

The wire will form the skeleton for the spider’s legs.




The legs were wrapped in newspaper and masking tape to give them shape. Some plastic strips cut from recycled milk jugs were hot glued onto the body and legs for support. Finally the entire body was covered with strip mache.




The last step featured here was the addition of papier mache clay giving the top of the abdomen some design/texture, more clay on the head and the addition of some eyes and hair (broom bristles)




Just realized the photos don’t show the eyes, no biggie because I didn’t really like the eyes anyway, they were too small.

Here’s the eyes:



The next steps:

Fix the legs, they are still weak and very rough looking. May add some hair bristles to the legs as well.

Fix the eyes, the spider pictured above used garbanzo beans (cue laughs now) but they really need to be bigger and smoother.

Add some detailing to the bottom of the abdomen and head. Also further define the fangs which were simply created by attaching corrugated cardboard cut-outs and defining with clay.

There was quite a bit with this project that didn’t go well, but I think the spiders have potential to be pretty cool.

It’s been a couple days since I have last worked on them so I think I can approach them with a fresh outlook and some fresh ideas.

Stay tuned.