Fun from neatorama.com

The next time you are shopping for your favorite haunter or zombie lover, consider some of these awesome items from neatorama.com....

No office desk would be complete without its own Glow In The Dark Zombie Play Set.  The best part would be secretly naming each zombie after your most hated beloved co-workers, then considering the ways to kill them and bury them in your October haunt…

Then there’s the Zombie Pet Shop.  I think it would be hilarious to put these in with the family hamster and watch your spouse/child/hamster freak out.

And last but not least a classic for family game night…. what I like to call Skull Jenga…. Stack the Bones.  Call the parents and have them come over to play a family friendly game of bone balancing with the grandkids.

Wouldn’t any of these items be great for secret haunters gifts?!  Love them!

Christmas Shopping…

We tried so hard to be normal, red blooded CHRISTMAS type people today, and got out with the masses to celebrate Black Friday.  Happened by Big Lots to pick up some cheap stocking stuffers.  Found an angel tombstone topper that I’m sure is supposed to be all Christmas-ey and stuff…. oh, and 8 packs of flicker LED tealights that are probably supposed to be in a cute little Christmas window or something….

Yeah, tried really hard to Christmas shop, but gosh darn we are coming home with more Halloween stuff than Santa stuff!

Hope everyone is enjoying the Turkey Day weekend… this 4 day weekend is just such a blessing for me – time with the family, then time to unwind.  Love it!

Not good at prop building and blog writing at the same time!

Wow, I just want to start by sending huge kudos to people like Frog Queen, Captain, Kimily, Grim, GhoulFriday, Dave, Mr. Macabre, Mr. Season of Shadows, and soooo many others, for keeping me entertained daily with such prolific instructional and entertaining blog posts AND being able to build props for haunts at the same time…. man, I’m just so impressed, especially because it is NOT something that I apparently have the ability to do!

Just a quick update – we started September by going to Orlando for a week and never got to leave the Mouse compound – I felt like I was in prison!  Next time I’m actually going to SEE Florida, and maybe work in a way to meet up with one of my haunt favorites, The Captain himself!

Scenes like this were our reality for a week.  Exhausting.

Got back from Florida on Sunday, my dad had emergency surgery on Tuesday, then Jaybo and I came down with the flu on Wednesday.  And that is where we have been for almost a full week now.  Listless, unaware that October is tomorrow.

Enough of the boring stuff…

I have been working on retrofitting last years tombstones… if you are a regular here you might remember that the wind snapped all of my tombstones last year.

  A tombstone base, minus the stone.  Circa 2008.  Brilliant stuff, eh?

After that debacle I started embedding PVC in all of my stones, which will slip over rebar. 

 

As for last years, I had to trace each one onto another layer of foam, then dig out perfectly good painted foam (the back) to make a trench for the pvc to lie in, then glue the new smooth back onto, wood fill the seams, sand, and repaint.  I am still doing that… or will when I can sit for more than an hour without getting the shakes and sweating to death!

 

Speaking of wood filler – did you know that if you run out of wood filler while you are in your pajamas and running 102 fever, you can take wood glue and mix it with sand to make concrete style seam filler?  Works wonders, gives a neat texture, dries hard as a rock, and you don’t even have to go to the store, LMAO.  (Also gives a nice sturdy weight to the stones, which is always cool)

Have a ton of pumpkins (ok, 5) for Jaybo to build bodies for to make static monster guys, and then I think we will finally be in position to get everything in the yard.  

Oh, and finished my Big Lots angel.  I have this way of “ruining” anything store bought, LOL.

Before:

and after:

I’m even corrupting this cute little thing!

Hoping to get everything finished up this week (haha, I am barely making it just typing this) and get it out by Sunday… but then again, this might just be the year of the flu around our house.  So disappointing, but we will work with it!

Today's amateur papier mache tip: Armature…. get the building of the armature right from the beginning…. if the shape is wrong, you will only be making it worse with layers of mache.   (I am always of the mind that “I can just build it up with mache – and end up with STILL boxy shoulders, or a deformed face, etc.  Just build the armature right, use cardboard to build up features, and go from there!

More to come soon… hang in there everyone… this is the time of year we live for!!

Store Bought Items and Clay Recipes

Have been watching the thread at Halloween forum where Terra describes the her version of the 'Beloved' Tombstone, and absolutely fell in love with the way the dress pleats, creases, and curls underneath the monster mud and Drylok.  I decided to start drawing up some sketches and doing some online research of Cemetery Statuary to be able to incorporate a dress, while coming up with something completely different from Terra’s version.  I also started hunting dresses, looking in thrift shops, Craigslist, etc.  and believe it or not, found my gem on Ebay.  After a few tense days, I won this one for $10.00.  Bet the seller didn’t like me too much, heh.

I never knew how hard it is to photograph a white dress in a white house.

 

 

             

Sorry I can’t post some of my inspiration cemetery statue pictures, but I steal from ALL over the internet, and heaven only knows what kind of trouble I would get into for throwing some of those out there without the proper permission, haha.

Another find was at Michaels, while picking up a new glue gun and some Sculpey. 

7 inches tall, made of resin, 5.99 full price, but I used my 40% off coupon to get her for 3 bucks.  (Made Jayson use his 40% off coupon for my new glue gun – he got the crap end of that stick, lol).  Now she just needs to get dirtied up…. fast.  :)

A note on my clay.  I have gotten some emails asking the recipe for the clay.  I’m going to post it, but with a word of caution.   This is NO WHERE NEAR as good as Creative Paperclay, or Sculpey or anything… it is pliable and easy to work with, using water as your smoothing solvent, but if you put it on too thick, it cracks.  It also breaks if your 13 year old son accidentally kicks a gargoyle over and it hits the garage floor…. hypothetically, of course.

Lost the tip of his ear, and a chunk at the base of his ear.

BUT.  Having said that, it is also cheap, easy as pie to make, smoothes out pretty nicely, and can have a purpose, as long as you know its short comings.

Showing cracks during the drying process.  I found a solution for this, see below.

 

One Of Many Homemade Clay Recipes:

3 1/2 – 4 Cups Flour (depending on humidity.  I tend to use 4)

1/2 C Salt

1 TB Cream of Tartar (powder in a small jar, found on spice aisle)

2 C water

2 1/2 TB Oil

1 TB Vanilla Extract – Optional.  Kinda makes it smell like Play Doh, and it’s just for fun.

Boil the water.  Place flour, salt, and cream of tartar in a large bowl.  (I use my largest Tupperwear bowl).  Measure out your oil and vanilla, and have it ready.

Once the water is boiling, pour directly into flour all at once.  Pour the oil and vanilla in, and stir to combine.  It may seem a little bit dry at first, but don’t add more water yet.  Wait a minute or two for it to cool if you are a pansy like me.  Once cool enough to touch, start kneading.  This is SOOO therapeutic.  If I could knead warm dough ever day that I don’t have to worry about baking and having it be too tough, I would be a happy girl.  If it is still too dry after kneading for several minutes, add a bit of water a few drops at a time.  I have never had to do this.  Knead until it is no longer sticky at all, and has the consistency of, well, clay.

Stores in a plastic container with a lid.  (This size batch fits PERFECTLY into a large Cool Whip container.  I’m just sayin….)

If you apply this to a prop, and notice hairline cracks the next day when it is drying (it is air dry, not to be fired) you can cover those pretty well by using a brush, and painting some papier mache paste over them… this smoothes it out.

I have another recipe to try that involves glycerine, so as soon as I find that at the drug store, I will be testing again.  Will let you know how that goes.

If anyone uses this clay on a prop this year, I would sure like to see it… hint.  hint.

Big Lots Damaged Statue Score!

Well, I  missed the big sale on Garden Statuary at Big Lots – it ended on Saturday, and I just wasn’t able to get over there.  This morning, Jayson and I were out running errands on his day off, and decided to stop in, there was an angel from there that I have seen in several forum threads, and I just wanted to SEE her.  She is originally priced at $35 bucks, but with the sale, people were getting her for $23….  I did not intend to pay full price for her, but heck, what can you loose just walking around Big Lots?

I did find the angel – there was only one of her left, and much to my happy surprise, she was damaged… pretty good, actually.

This was the only area of damage, the rest of her was perfect.

So after walking around the store, and finding some pretty good landscape fabric at $5 for a 50’ roll (good for the boarded window effect, and just about anything you want to “black out”) I asked the manager if there could be a discount for the angel, since she was damaged.  He let us have her for $17 bucks, and I was happy as a clam!

Now, what to do with her?  My thought was to put some monster mud around the area to strengthen it, and stop the cracking, or loosing any more pieces, but leaving the existing cracks and 2 holes… then paint to age it, and let it appear as an old broken statue.  I think Jayson might be thinking on how to fill in the holes….

What do you think we should do with her?

Hope you are all having a great Monday!  Talk to you soon :)