|
Viewing 1 - 9 out of 12 Blogs.
Page:
1 |
|
I just ordered a couple of skulls from the American Science & Surplus catalog web site. They have weird (often useless) and offbeat things, including the skulls I ordered. At $12.50 a pop, they sound pretty reasonable. I'm curious to see how good they look. The website also has a full-sized skeleton for $299. The item number for the skulls is 91799 and for the full skeleton it is 88824. I would so love to have one of those skeletons.  http://www.sciplus.com/
Tags: Props
I bought myself a set of battery operated pumpkin carving tools this year. There is a carving blade, etching tool, drill, plus one of those manual Pumpkin Masters type drills and a manual tracing wheel. The tracing wheel does a great job of transferring patterns to the surface of the pumpkin without much effort. However, you can only really use it on large, relatively straight or slightly curved areas. On very detailed areas the Pumpkin Masters type pattern poker is a much better bet. The blade does a good job in carving, but only if you have your pumpkin's walls scraped to no more than an inch thick. Anything thicker and the blade tends to bog down a bit. Not bad though, considering that the thing is battery operated. I can't comment on the etching tool as I didn't do any etching although I suspect that it does a decent job. Control is a factor as it is with any carving job; it is easier to get carried away when you aren't manually sawing at the pumpkin so a bit more care needs to be exercised when using these tools than is necessary when using manual tools.
I just cleaned out (not carved, not yet) five pumpkins. Two of them I did with the Pumpkin Gutter and the other three I did with regular pumpkin scoops (Pumpkin Masters orange plastic scoops). It may have something to do with the pumpkin crop this year or it could be the fact that the commercial pumpkin growers harvest the pumpkins too soon, but the Pumpkin Gutter wasn't really working well. In a white pumpkin I was gutting with it, the Pumpkin Gutter was actually liquefying the pulp. It doesn't work well with the stringy, seedy part and you can't get at the bottom of the pumpkin with the blades (the pumpkin gutter looks like a mutant electric mixer blade and is used with a drill). In the same amount of time it took to gut two pumpkins with the gutter, I gutted three pumpkins with the Pumpkin Masters scoopers. I also did a better job with the scoopers than I did with the gutter.
You don't really stay much cleaner with the gutter as you still have to reach in there and scoop out seeds, pulp and strings. The Pumpkin Gutter is an interesting concept, but I think the good old-fashioned way works better.  http://www.pumpkincarvingtool.com/
I managed to put up my cemetery over the last two days. Yesterday I finished off the archway and gates, installed them and then installed the fence. Installing them doesn't take much, it is just a matter of driving metal rods into the ground and slipping the archway, etc. over the metal rods. It helps when everything is made of PVC pipe. Useful stuff, PVC pipe. Today I put up the tombstones and various other goodies. I had originally thought to string lights along the archway and fence, but have instead opted to light the cemetery at night with floodlights/spotlights. In the past I've used both, but the floodlights/spotlights were red. They made an interesting effect, but only if you were standing out on the road and staring at the cemetery. Whizzing past in a car, you aren't going to see much with red light illumination, so this year I'm going with plain white lights. I hope that makes things a little more visible. The strings of lights didn't really add much, so I'm not using them this year. 
I built myself a Sleepy Hollow type scarecrow. Not quite as scary, creepy, spooky as the one in the Johnny Depp movie, but in my opinion, not too shabby. It's amazing what you can do with some PVC pipe and fittings, old burlap bags, white duct tape and a fake carveable pumpkin. 
The front view..and...  ...the rear view. Mr. Scarecrow is quite spiffy in his burlap clothes...he even has a cape.  I had the hands last year...had them sticking out of the works of my piano. I think they are doing much better service here, lol. 
A witch to keep the cat company
I decided to make another styrofoam ball critter, but this
time I made a witch to keep the cat company.
To make the witch I used another styrofoam ball of the same
size as the cat, the same eyes as I used on the cat, a small witch hat, black and white yarn, florist picks, small
styrofoam balls, some plastic hands and feet and Mod Podge.
I stuck the hands and feet into the large ball after having
brushed a little Mod Podge on the stems to help them stick in the styrofoam
more securely. I then brushed Mod Podge in strategic areas of the large ball
and started wrapping the black yarn around it.
After having wrapped the entire ball in black yarn and glued
on the eyes, I cut a small styrofoam ball in half and then fashioned a mouth
and nose from the halves, both of which I wrapped in white yarn and then
attached to the large ball with Mod Podge and a florist pick. I then made a wig out of the black and white
yarn by creating a number of braids; I made bangs out of the yarn by using
single short strands of the yarn. I tied
the braids together with a strand of yarn, and did the same for the bangs.
I then stuck a pick into the top of the large ball (it helps
to make a hole first with a metal skewer as it is difficult to pierce through
the yarn with a florist pick) and stuck the braids on the pick.
I did the same with the bangs.
After which I glued the witch hat over the top of the pick
with Mod Podge (I had one little piece of chenille wire left from the cat which
I wrapped around the hat).
...and
I
made a cat (sort of). Kitty is made out of styrofoam balls, yarn, wire
chenille, big funky glue on eyes, florist's picks, the odd puffball and
lots and lots of Mod Podge (did you know that stuff will really dry out
your hands, lol?) 
I
started out Mod Podging the yarn around the large ball. At that point I
was being very neat and the yarn was cooperating nicely.
Things
went well for a while but the yarn started to fight me and wouldn't
stay nice and neat. I covered the entire ball in a circular pattern,
and then wrapped yarn around the ball in no set pattern so any gaps in
the yarn were covered, making it look like a big ball of yarn. Once I
had the large ball covered to my satisfaction, I wrapped four smaller
balls in black yarn for the feet (after applying a coat of Mod Podge)
and using two more of the small balls for the kitty's cheeks, I
wrapped them in white yarn. I used the chenille wire for whiskers, the
ears and the tail. I stuck them into the yarn as best I could; no
doubt there is a better way to do it, but they seem to be secure. I
attached the cheeks and feet with florist's picks, glued on one little
black puff ball for the nose and also glued on the eyes.
...and a side view...
--------------------------------------------------------------
Thanks to a very good suggestion by CreepyChrisS, I no longer have to worry about the one bad eye on Mummy Boy. I bought several gauze bandages and wrapped them around his face (leaving the good eye showing) and also around various parts of his body, making it look as though he still has some of the exterior wrappings left on his body. He looks creepier with one of his eyes covered..I like it. 
Last year Mother Nature was very unkind to my Halloween cemetery. She did the best she could with incessant high wind and rain to trash the thing. More than once I had to take in all the tombstones or see them winging their way up the road. She really beat up the cemetery arch and took off a lot of the finials (skulls and pumpkins) from the fence. I retired the arch since it really was beat up from the weather so I need to make myself another cemetery archway, gateway or whatever, lol. I'm going to construct this one from pvc pipe, wood strips and black spray paint specifically made to stick to plastic (the same as the fence itself). In addition to the archway, I am planning on creating a fake gate out of thin strips of wood and thin pvc pipe. I'll make it in two small sections which will be independently attached to the ground via stakes up the pvc pipe. I'm going to replace the finials with skulls (the pumpkins were a bit cute), and I'll rig up something to put on the archway; I did save the welcome sign from the archway, so perhaps that will be a good start for archway decor. We'll see how it goes.
Page:
1 |
|
|
