Cauldron Redux

Yesterday my husband brought home some dry ice.

You can already guess what happened.

Even though my coals were going, it wasn't dark enough to really show them off because either you can see the cauldron or the coals. Not both in pictures.

And for good measure, here's video of the dry ice in action.

Bubble on my Halloween friends.

Hot Coals Tutorial

You may remember that cauldron I rusted with some oatmeal and sand back in July. Normally, I put it in the middle of my driveway on top of some sticks and shove a red strobe light underneath to mimic fire.

But this year I wanted something new and fancy for my cauldron to seethe on top of. Enter the hot coals.

It's actually really easy to make this.

All you need is:

• a board. I used a poster board, but other people use wood, plexiglass, whatever is handy
• tin foil
• empty pop bottles
• a string of orange lights
• spray insulation foam
• spray paint

First step is to cut the board to fit your choice of cauldron.

 

Take the tin foil and wrap it over the board. This'll hopefully increase the light output.

Chop up the bottoms of the pop bottles to varying heights. Hot glue those onto the board. Mine are all clear so they're a wee bit hard to see.

 I didn't take any pictures of the next step because I got excited and thought I did. Take your string of lights and drape them over the board, taping it down where you get it right. I waited for Target to put out a string of flickering orange lights this year, which is why I'm finally making my coals in late September. I plugged the lights in as I worked and put them on top of the bottle bottoms in clusters, all over.

Make sure to leave out the plug or your coals will never light up.

Now for the spray insulation foam. This stuff is the devil, but a devil we know. It sticks to everything, expands into a mess, and is evil. Did I mention the evil? Pretty sure I did.

Evil evil popcorn.

This is what it looks like before I painted it.

But since they moved Daylight Saving, most of the haunted house set up is seen by light and not in the dark. So I had to take away the bright white look with the power of spray paint.

It looks a bit more like the surface of some cheesy sci-fi series set, The Crags of Mars, but it gets the job done.

And, most importantly, it looks like this when lit up in near darkness.

That's how to make your own hot coals to smoulder in grass. No Hogwarts degree required.

Sleepy puppy.

The Crow Flies in Midnight

It took a lot of wrenching of garments and gnashing of teeth, but the impossible has finally happened.

Target put its halloween stuff out.

I got my twinkling lights for the last halloween project of the year. I'll explain later.

There's also the griffin statue to protect my yard from any Darkspawn and that adorable crow skeleton.

If I could, I'd skeleton everything. Skeleton cat, skeleton dog, skeleton dragon, skeleton pancakes. Everything must be flayed!

With the kitty from earlier and my horde of skeletons, I decided a little photo set up was in order. So I combined my three skeletons to make this:

If you want a skelekitty or skelecrow, get thee to Target. I predict they will not last long.

Lil Boo

Meet Lil Boo.

He's a bit shy but would really like some candy. 'nk you. Twick or Tweat, please.

Where's his head? Well, you can't be a trick or treater ghost with a head, now can you?

Lil Boo was born when I realized I had a ton of monster mud leftover from Angela. So I got to thinking what could I make that was hobbit sized, partly adorable and partly spooky.

He started out the same as Angela; PVC frame, chicken wire, and a fitted sheet draped over him. I wanted it to look like a kid grabbed an ancient sheet and threw it on before hitting the streets.

To make the gaping hole I tried the balloon approach with mixed results.

I had to do him in a bunch of stages, adding the monster mud first to the body, then slopping on the hood and the balloon.

Finally, I painted the whole grey sheet white and added some accents of brown on the trim to make it look stained and old.

After giving him his bucket and flashlight, he was ready for some candy!

This Sunday, because we didn't have enough to do, we decided to make a coffin. It's not a full one, but about a quarter coffin so it looks like it's bursting from the ground, or poorly buried.

The broken ends at the bottom are courtesy of the asshole who ran into our fence and drove off.

I'm trying some ideas to spook it up, like adding a strobe under or we might get a tiny fog machine to shove under it.

Trick or Treaters and coffins, and I still have one more prop I have to finish before Halloween. It'll be coming down to the wire this year.

Some Halloween Treats

It's the exact middle of September, that hazy golden time when all stores finally scrape away the crusty bits of Back To School but two weeks before Christmas begins its tinsel cacophony.

Halloween Time!

I thought for certain that Target would have it's stuff out this second weekend in September. My hopes lit when I saw a few cute little Halloween things in their $1 cheap shit bins.

But the back walls were nothing but picked over pencils and binders no one seemed in the mood to move. You're dead to me Target.

Yet hope springs eternal in the form of Walgreens. They've been more miss than hit the past few years, but Walgreens is always good for things I don't see anywhere else, and they were no exception this go around. A few adorable dancing things, a crap ton of Nightmare Before Christmas Stuff, and this rat.

I've seen the half rat prop before, usually flailing in a trap or gnawing on something undead. I'm not big into gory so it got a meh. But I fell so badly for the rat chewing away on some potato chips.

It's probably because I watched the hell out of Charlotte's Web as a child, but I had to name the rat Templeton. I wish it sounded like Paul Lynde.

The tombstone got a paint job. I liked the base but it needed some help.

On to the food portion of Halloween.

At Shopko I found these suckers that have bones for sticks! A brilliant idea attached to a rather nasty tasting sucker. Oh well. At least I'll have a ton of bones left over when it's done and I can look like I'm gnawing on a fairy as I suffer through them.

The skull I got from Home Depot. Pretty good deal since it was under $18. But the real point of this picture is those Cheetos. Bone Cheetos! Make your own skeleton Cheetos! Who cares about unicorn tear flavored Lays when we have bone cheetos over here people!

I've been busy updating my Zazzle store with some things, so here comes a vast array of ideas I had.

First up, the open grave car mats.

I had the skeleton grave image from a few years back and Zazzle started offering car mats so I combined the two.

On CafePress I created my first ever rug. It's Stairs to Nowhere for people who wants to have a fake basement.

And finally I fixed up some pictures of Hel and put that on things.

That was the Halloween portion of my weekend that didn't involve power tools. Target's still on the list though. You better have your stuff out this weekend, I need the lights to make something.

Damn you, Target!