You Spin Me Right Round Baby

Created some animated GIF’s showing some of my props in a full 360 degree view.

The animation was accomplished by photographing the props 36 times, rotating the prop 10 degrees for each photo.

Photoshop was used to animate the images into the spinning 360 view.

If you are not nauseous yet you can head over to www.stolloween.com to see more samples of dizzy spinny props.

2005

Set your “wayback” dial to the year 2005. While browsing some old digital photos I found these gems from a few years back.

The photos showcase some of my first papier mache skulls made with the template system.

Granted it’s not the most show stopping display the world has ever seen but there are a few things I like …such as the twinkle lights wrapped around the corn shocks and the simple corrugated cardboard tombstones.

Even small displays celebrating all things scary are good.

Gutting 100 Pumpkins

Time has come for kids to head back to school so here’s one for all the P.T.O or P.T.A. parents out there looking for creative ways to raise funds for their children’s school. The idea is to sell “designer, pre-carved, scented pumpkins.”

Stay with me here, we’ve done this and it was pretty successful.

Several years ago when my oldest son was in fifth grade his class needed to raise money to go on an overnight camping trip. The camp was called “Mystic Lake” hence the name of the fundraiser I’m going to describe which was called “Mystic Pumpkins.”

The cost of the trip was several thousand dollars and ideas were needed to raise the money.

To make a long story short the fifth grade teacher came to me saying that she had come across a deal where a local pumpkin farm would sell her 100+ pumpkins for a very fair price and she wondered if we could sell them as some sort of fundraiser. After thinking about the idea for an evening I came up with the concept of selling pumpkins that were already cleaned, carved, preserved and scented.

Here’s the lowdown on what went into making this fundraiser work.

First we had about 100 good sized jack-O’-lantern sized pumpkins to work with. I created some thirty different designs and transferred the designs to the pumpkins before they were gutted. I created stencils from sheets of plastic used for overhead projectors and used a permanent marker to transfer the designs to the surface of the pumpkins.

The weekend before the sale we enlisted the help of the fifth graders and cut the top and gutted all of the pumpkins. To help preserve the pumpkins we cleaned the interior of the gutted pumpkin with a mild bleach solution and coated the lid with petroleum jelly to reduce any rotting.

The pumpkins were then priced according to size, the larger the pumpkin the higher the price. During the two hour sale customers could choose the pumpkin they wanted then we would carve out the pre-traced design using an electric jigsaw. Once the pumpkin was carved we scented the lid with the customer’s choice of scent, either cinnamon or clove. When a lit candle was place in the pumpkin the heat from the candle made the scent sprinkled on the lid fill the room with a great autumn aroma.

The fundraiser was a success and involved a lot of volunteers but it was unique and received much positive feedback. In addition to carving the pumpkins we also saved all the seeds, roasted them and sold them in individual packages. The seeds were sold in two flavors; regular and hot and spicy using a tremendous amount of Tabasco Sauce as the heat.

· 1 1/2 cups raw whole pumpkin seeds

· 2 teaspoons butter, melted

· 1 pinch salt (plus any other spices such as garlic powder, seasoned salt, Mrs. Dash seasoning, Tabasco Sauce or Crushed Red Pepper)

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees F (150 degrees C).

2. Toss seeds in a bowl with the melted butter and salt (and other spices). Spread the seeds in a single layer on a baking sheet and bake for about 45 minutes or until golden brown; stir occasionally.

Bottom line, this was a fun and creative fundraiser…think pumpkin sales the next time you are faced with the challenge of raising money for your child’s school. Have fun and be creative!

Frosty August

Our summer here in mid-Michigan had been very mild until this month with temperatures in the 70’s and dropping into the 40’s and 50’s overnight.

Not exactly beach weather but great for sleeping.

This month we have seen the return of a normal summer with temps reaching to the 90’s accompanied with some rather sticky humidity.

Not as bad as some of my southern friends but still pretty warm for us northern folk.

So while you are basking in your cut offs and flip flops enjoy a couple of frosty photos from past Michigan winters that have served us well acting as our annual “untraditional” Christmas cards.

Monster Books from Crestwood House

Here is yet another cool find from our Salvation Army Thrift Store in Midland, MI. The cool find is a set of six “movie monster” books from Crestwood House out of Mankato, Minnesota. The books were produced and designed by Baker Street Productions, LTD., and after a quick Google search I discovered at least 15 more titles in the series.

The books I found are The Mole People, Bride of Frankenstein, Tarantula, Ghost of Frankenstein, The Raven and Werewolf of London, all copyrighted 1985 by MCA PUBLISHING, a Division of MCA Inc.

The books originally came from our local library which makes me wonder if kids don’t groove on picture books of black & white films made in the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s?

The books are loaded with movie stills and the text is a well written summary of film. Good stuff and a great find for anyone that loves Halloween, horror and cinema.

Out With The Old...

We bid farewell to the coffin, a prop that has served us well since 2007.

Out with the old and in with the new. My youngest son Kyle mastered the power driver and had the piece disassembled in about 15 minutes.

The boards comprising the framework will be used in the construction of something new and much more impressive if everything goes according to plan.

What is it you ask? Check back after this weekend for the results. (hopefully)

Cool Works from Tennessee

One of my favorite things about running www.stolloween.com is when I receive photos from people showing their papier mache props.

I appreciate the nice comments about how the information on the website helped get you started working with mache but the truth of the matter is that the website just pointed you in the right direction; your hard work made your creations a reality.

Here are some really fun and creative papier mache props sent to me last spring by Kim from Portland, TN. Awesome work Kim, thanks very much for allowing me to share!