When we decided we were going to have a medieval party a couple of years ago, we knew what we needed to go in the backyard. Yes, a dragon. Pretty danged ambitious, I know, but definitely worth the look on guests' faces when we were done.
Read on and learn how to build your own Halloween Dragon Prop.
We wanted a big dragon, not some wimpy little dog-sized thing, but something big enough to eat you. We reasoned that to be able to eat a full grown adult the head alone would have to be about 6ft long and almost four foot tall! That was insane, and we were on a budget.
We decided that our dragon would be sleeping in the darkest corner of the yard, that way, we could make an impressive head, and make arms that would fade off
into the shadows. The body would be more suggested than actually built, and if the head looked good enough, no one would notice.
It started with the sculpey maquette that you see at right. That gave us the general idea of the shape of the head, since that would be our main focus. We stopped by our local hardware store and picked up our main supplies:
- A few 8ft lengths of 3/4in PVC pipe
- Various elbow and T-joints
- A PVC pipe cutter (inexpensive and indispensable)
- A roll of chicken wire fencing
- A roll of light gauge wire
- Grey landscaping cloth
- A couple of cans of spray paint
- Quilter's batting
- Upholstery foam
- Crafter's 1/8 thick foam
- A 12in green beach ball
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4 comments:
COOL Blog Man!
I'm going to link to it!
Thanks bud! Glad you approve!
Hi,
We work at a summer camp and we are doing a medieval themed program this summer. We love the dragon you made and we want to try and make something similar. We have a few questions for you about it:
how much batting and chicken wire was used?
what was its final size?
what was the total cost of materials?
did you consider or try to add moving parts at all (mouth that opened and closed, etc.)
We were looking for an email address on the blog, but couldn't find one. We will check back here, it would be great if you could answer our questions!
THANKS!
Thanks for checking the blog out! I'll have to do some checking to remember the material amounts, but I believe that we ended up spending around $80 including the smoke machine and clip lamps. As I recall, the landscaping fabric was the most expensive item.
The completed size of his head was about 6ft long x 3ft wide x 3 1/2 tall. The hands were about the same width as the head and the arms were just draped landscaping fabic attached to stakes about 4ft out of the ground.
The one moving part I was disappointed that we ran out of time to do was eye lids. It would have been great to have him be able to wake up and have his eyes snap open.
I'll be posting soon about the graveyard/mausoleum that we made one year and that may interest you as well.
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