My first prop this year was a witch stirring a cauldron. Unfortunately, I didn't take pictures while I was making her.
The body is constructed of wood and PVC pipe with chicken wire to bulk it up. I connected the arms with large closed cup hooks linked to each other to give it a loose jointed feel. I used pipe insulation to give the bulkiness to the arms. I bought a Cryptkeeper mask from ebay, but I wanted it to look more witchlike, so I made it a distorted nose complete with wart. The eyes are actually white ceramic door knobs I picked up at a garage sale with the pupils painted with acrylics and then painted with glossy clear paint to give it that wet look. The hands were from one of those hanging ghouls I picked up at Walgreens last year.
The cauldron was made from one of those large plastic buckets with the rope handles. I used foam and plaster cloth for the top and the center. The stick is actually a shaved pool noodle painted brown to look like wood. The wooden logs are also pool noodles carved and painted. I used a string of blinking red Christmas lights for the fire. For the finished piece, I covered the lights with some plastic bags from the grocery store to give it more of a fiery look. On the inside, I have green Christmas lights and I'll be hooking up my fogger to hopefully have a nice green fog coming up from the cauldron. After several tries with different motors, I finally went with a rotisserie motor I bought at a garage sale for 50 cents. I must have spent at least 2 months trying to figure out how to get it to not spin too fast and how to hook up the proper metal pieces to the motor.
I'm glad to say, though, that this prop lasted the entire night. Actually, it was the only animated prop that did work. I had made an FCG and a Trashcan Trauma converted to a tree, that did not work.
Tags: Witch Haunt Halloween Prop
