HALLOWEEN FREEBIE: Creepy Photos

We found some vintage photos at an antique shop the other day. Vintage photos themselves are great because folks didn't quite know how to behave in front of these new-fangled camera things and as a result there's something about the portraits that is a little... off. A little creepy.

I used PhotoShop to up the creepy factor a little bit. Just click on the photos and it will bring you to the larger version that you can right-click and "save as". Find a funky frame or just spray paint one black and add some silver details.
Enjoy!

WHO'S AFRAID OF THE BIG BAD WOLF MASK?

Here's a mask I created to go along with a Little Red Ridinghood costume that my wife wore one year. Not content with the latex masks widely available I decided to make my own out of fake fur and a baseball cap. Though created for a Halloween party, this wolf mask could also be well used for children's theatre. You could also use it as a werewolf costume.

As you can see, my face is visible inside the wolf's mouth. This, I explained, was because my face was the Hunter looking out the wolf's throat getting ready to make his move. You could also combine it with a black see through mask (or even black pantyhose) like I did with the Parrot Head Hat if you don't want your face seen.

I began construction by building the muzzle down from the hat brim with black craft foam. This gave ma a base for the fur. As you can see in the photos, the head was covered with three distince pieces of fur. To achieve the effect I wanted I started with three rough cut strips of fur slightly larger than I thought I would need. I began with the top, center piece and painted a stripe of fabric glue about half an inch wide down the middle to secure it tentatively to the hat. This piece I cut longer so that it would hang down my neck and tuck it to whatever shirt I wore. The center strip starts at the top of the nose, and makes the top of the muzzle. When it reaches the spot where the brim meet the rest of the hat, that's where the eyes will be , so the fabric should fan out to create the brows and then continue upwards to the ears. Glue the top down.

The side pieces of fur meet in the front beneath the nose and continue to wrap around the back beneath the the neck flap. I used the same process of gluing a small strip down, trimming to the shape I wanted and then gluing the rest down.

The nose is just a folded piece of black craft foam glued in place.

The eyes were painted buttons, and I cut the fur around the eyes in the typical diamond shape of a wolf's eye and tucked the top of the button underneath a flap of the top strip of fur.

The lower jaw was constructed out of 1/2 inch upholstery foam and attached to the bottom of the hat with a large button as a hinge. The teeth were added last, cut from 1/4 inch white craft foam and glued in place.

For the rest of the costume I made really simple fingerless gloves out of the fur and really simple shoe covers. The nice thing about using fur like this is that you can't get caught up too much in fiddley details because they just won't show. Finish it off with either a flannel shirt and jeans or go the Grandma disguise route and find your self a nightgown!.

HALLOWEEN FREEBIE: CROWS

Another Halloween Freebie for you! This time we have some crow silhouettes for you to cut out and use as you'd like. There's probably a little more detail on these than was necessary, but they'll look really good lurking on the wall or above a doorway. In the future I'd like to do something more dimensional like the bats, but in the meantime, enjoy CROWS.

Costume Standbys: THE LABCOAT

Another entry into your expanding costume closet should be the Labcoat. Got invited to a party Friday AND Saturday? You can't go as the same thing to BOTH of them; that would be gauche! Enter: the labcoat.
From the humorous to the horrific, established characters to spontaneous creations, the lab coat is a really flexible costume piece. Mad scientist is the first obvious choice, but should you make up your own or reference someone people already know like Dr Frankenstein, Doc Brown (from Back to the Future), Dr. Horrible (the Joss Whedon creation)? Dr. Stranglove, Bunsen Honeydew or Beaker, Dr. Hackenbush(any Grouch Marx fans out there?), Dr. Jekyll, and Dr. Octopus are all options depending on how much time you have.
Maybe you want a more historical figure like Einstein, or you could make a political statement and go as health care reform (pantsless? shirtless?). Make up your own medical doctor character and spend the night handing out prescriptions ("drink two of these and call me in the morning") or baggies of jellybean "pills". This leads us into humorous ideas which include the proctologist and gynecologist gags that have been popular the last few years.

Surgical accidents can make for a grusome theme with blood spattering and spare bodyparts tucked in your pockets. You could carry around a jello brain and hand out samples ("Oh, he won't be needing it anymore"). Or maybe your dentist is scary enough.

Halloween Cookies - classic black

My favorite sugar cookie recipe is only improved by some cool cookie cutters and food dye. I highly recommend using black paste to color your dough. The paste is concentrated and assures a dark, sinister, black cookie dough, without too much hassle. Glass or metal mixing bowls and an apron are also a good idea, since this stuff stains.

White icing is a great contrast, and shows up well in black light. Yes, we do spend time thinking about how we'll light our food (sometimes with sad results - see Brain Jello Mould post). I'm a firm believer that food that lends itself to the general theatrics of Halloween should be showcased.

Black spiderweb cookies with white icing look fantastic, and the black makes a nice background for a pumpkin cookie iced in orange.

Epicurious.com's Gingerbread Skeleton Cookies

Incorporate your non-Halloween cookie cutters, and take a look at the gingerbread skeleton cookie recipe at Epicurious.com. Inspired to be a bit more gruesome than usual in my baking one year, I did something similar with black dough and a fish cookie cutter for our pirate themed party.

Halloween Cookies - fingers

A good shortbread recipe and some nuts become creepy fingers for nibbling. An online search will turn up several recipes, but this one at Allrecipes.com is one I typically use.

Be creative with your substitutes - jam instead of red food coloring, or pistachios (rather than almonds) for extra nasty fingernails. Don't leave out the knuckle details - they add to the gross factor!

The serving presentation is another opportunity for creativity - I envision these on a lab-white plate with raspberry sauce drizzled suggestively around the edges...

FREEBIE: TOE TAG INVITES

Invitations can really set the stage for your guests as to what to expect. Someone who receives a invite that obviously suggests a theme is less likely to show up in a t-shirt and more likely to get into the spirit. If your theme happens to be monster/ mad scientist kind of thing, this freebie should be just what the doctor ordered. So to speak.
Toe Tag Invites. The file includes simplified instructions on the second page for cutting and folding, so make sure when you print it you just select page one. After putting the the invited together we took small test tubes from American Science and Surplus and sprinkled in some red glitter and a small plastic spider. We used the ever popular cheap plastic spider rings that you always see around and cut off the ring part. The year after we used these I found small rubber fingers that would have worked nicely as well - use your imagination!

Fake Fur on Sale

Fake fur can be useful to make creatures, costume accents and in my case puppets as well. This is the time of year that I skulk around Joanne's Fabrics because they gotten the new fall stuff in and that usually includes a good batch of furs. Plus right now there is a 30% off sale on fur as well as other homemade costume staples.
Now Joanne's didn't pay for a plug, but I can plug myself: my latest puppet in a contest at the appropriately named puppetcontest.com. Please check him out and cast your vote!

Influences: Tim Burton

I was first introduced to the work of Tim Burton in the late eighties when his "Vincent" short appeared on Nickelodeon's long since forgotten Turkey Television. It amazed me. Already his trademark style was evident with long, drawn faces holding gigantic tired eyes. It was like nothing I'd seen; deliciously creepy and the first glimpse in to the mind of a man who seems to breathe Halloween.

Then came Beetlejuice and Batman, and Edward Scissorhands. Then The Nightmare Before Christmas came out and developed a cult following like no other stop-animation before it. Like no other Halloween movie that didn't involve young women being killed in excruciating ways (not that I can think of many others that don't).

Nightmare was Burton's sketchbook come to life. And in that sketchbook is a bevy of design ideas that can be adapted to your own Halloween. His jack o'lantern designs are the most obvious in their off-balanced creepy brilliance, but pay special attention to he color pallets as well. His use of shadows is no accident either.
So this year, when you're planning your party, pop in a Burton flick and let his craft influence yours!

An aside about Bats...

Stopped by Micheal's craft supply this weekend to check out this year's Halloween stuff and noticed something funny. Martha Stewart is selling Bat silhouettes for your walls in much the same idea as the freebie BATS template that I posted last year. Not that I'm suggesting having any influence over Martha's empire, but why pay ten bucks for paper bats when you can make your own for FREE? (minus black construction paper costs of course.)
I guess I'll have to post some spiders and crows as well.

Costume Standbys: THE CLOAK

Deciding on what to be for Halloween can sometimes be the hardest part. If you have a few stock items in your wardrobe it can be a big help -- especially if the invite arrived at the last minute. One of my favorite standbys is the ever useful cloak. A cloak is an extremely versatile costume accessory, appropriate for numerous characters and creations.

I have a black cloak that Kate graciously made me using a the Simplicity pattern to the right. You go the direction that they are evidently suggesting and use your cloak to create an Aragorn Lord of the Rings type character or some type of Jedi or Sith from Star Wars. It would also make a good base for a wizard costume. Or add a skull mask or face paint and be the grim reaper. Or a top hat and a dagger and you're Jack the Ripper. The first year I had the cloak I went as a De Niro style Frankenstein. Peek out below the broach and carry a jack o'lantern and you can be the Headless Horseman. Need I say Vampire? Steam punk? Goth? It works equally well as a medieval character as it does Victorian.
Because of the cut of this particular cloak some year I would like to go as Batman from Mike Mignola's Gotham by Gaslight.

Plus, in the years that you decide not to use the cloak in your outfit it can be combined with a mask and turned into a prop character greeting guests, completing a scene, or just lurking in a corner. Indispensable! We also like this other Simplicity pattern (9887) and made some nice cloaks for my brother and his girlfriend this past year. Just keep in mind where you live when choosing the fabric; a heavier cloth drapes nicely, but can be a killer if this party is just indoors or in a warmer climate.

HALLOWEEN FREEBIE: BATS FOR YOUR BELFRY

Here's a really simple papercraft freebie to deck your Halloween halls-- bats! Always a haunted house staple, these are nice because you can make a whole bunch of them and scatter them around. How simple you ask? Step 1: Download this file:bats.pdf
Step 2: Print and trim
Step 3: Trace bat shapes onto black construction paper (white colored pencils work well for this)
Step 4: Fold on dotted lines depending on what you want your bat to do (hang or fly)
Step 5: Suspend from ceilings and walls with fishing line and tape and enjoy!

Food for Mad Scientists

Gross and edible... the jello brain. We tried different colors and presentations. The blue brain was lit from a tube/stand below the glass plate. The pool underneath the brain is a nice effect, but is indeed slightly melted jello... beware the hot light bulb! A bit of milk added to the liquid of the jello mix gives the brain more opaqueness.

The year we planned the Mad Scientist Lab, we went looking for this jello mold, and found it at a local toy shop. I've seen them online as well.



We found additional edible body parts by poking around at various discount stores. Bags of foil wrapped chocolate eyes, ears, etc. filled a small plastic cauldron.

Canning jars, glass beakers and stainless steel trays make nice serving pieces. And a liberal sprinkling of rubber rats around the food didn't seem to scare off snackers! American Science and Surplus has been a favorite and affordable prop supplier for years for lab equipment and more. Their collection of odds and ends is inspiring!

Influences: Mike Mignola

When figuring out how to decorate your place for a Hallows Eve soiree it's good to get some inspiration. By now most of you reading should have at least heard of the character Hellboy from his last two movies if not the comic books that he originally sprang from. Here's some Homemade Halloween homework:
If you've never read a Hellboy graphic novel find one and do it. If you have read one before then re-read it. His mastery of lighting is incredible. His simplicity of shape truly is genius in it's subtlety and lends itself well to decorating. He can make a simple silhouette of a crow into one of the most disconcerting sights just by the way it's contrasting eye stares at you.
The picture to the right is one of my favorites from his story "The Wolves of Saint August". Check out more of his stuff at darkhorse.com/Zones/Hellboy or just head to your local comics shop or discerning book store.

BACKYARD GRAVEYARD III: THE DENIZENS

So the stones are spooky and everyone's impressed by the mausoleum, but... there's a graveyard down the street. Where's the scare? Any Halloween set can be improved by denizens. You can get pretty elaborate, but simple can be effective as well.
Our dragon was more impressive with a victim at his claws. A bag of skeleton bones from the local box store and a child's role playing Knight set with a shield, helmet and sword (with some spray paint "charred " effects) and it was done.
The Mummy was made by creating a basic skeleton out of rolled up catalogs that had been accumulating (how's that for recycling?). They were tied together with plastic shopping bags and then the entire thing was wrapped in gauze bought down at the pharmacy. If you find a cotton gauze, then it's possible to "distress" it with a tea bath. The smallish skull that we used happened to glow in the dark, so we elected to keep our mummy a stark white to show up best in the dim light.
The Pirate and the Ghoul were both constructed using the same method. Two pieces of 2x4 were screwed together in a simple cross shape with the horizontal board acting as the shoulders and the vertical board extending far enough to hold up the head. Next we straitened out two sections on coat hanger wire long enough to go the length of the arms with a little extra for the hands. Taking a pair of needle-nosed pliers we then twisted one end of each "arm" into as tight as circle as possible perpendicular to the rest of the wire. This is how we screwed the wire into either end of the 2x4. This way the arms are somewhat positionable. For the Ghoul we just draped a store-bought costume from the year before over the structure. Plastic bags filled out the head, arms and hands. The pirate was just made out of old costume parts and a skull mounted on a dowel.

The Witch in the rocking chair is similar to the Ghoul and Pirate, in that it is mostly a store-bought costume mounted on a 2x4 frame. In this case however there is a base on the seat and additional 2x4 legs extending downward. She has been a mainstay at our parties, creeping guests out enough so that they would avaoid her and enter through the backdoor. If you want to steer guests and trick-or-treaters towards your backyard display, an imposing figure like this blocking the front entrance can quite effective.

BACKYARD GRAVEYARD II: THE MAUSOLEUM

The mausoleum. This was our first major grave yard upgrade. Built mainly out of plywood, Alex had initially intended to reuse the materials to make bookshelves after Halloween was over, but it turned out so cool that he couldn't bear to. This set piece has played a part in each subsequent Halloween since.
I think one of the best touches was the sonotubes that we cut in half (creating two half cylinders) to make the columns on either side. A close second place would have to go to the batshape we created out of plywood scraps to go over the doorway complete with two red rhinestone eyes that glinted in the torchlight.
Speaking of torches... I'm always amazed at how well a little black spray paint works to make things look creepier. Tiki torches in a graveyard look chintzy; black tiki torches look creepy.
The first year Alex crafted plywood sides and 2x4 support struts to the front facade to complete the look. By the next year that plywood at least had been re-purposed and we discovered that the facade itself fit nicely in front of the garden shed. This also allowed our mummified friend to set back from the entrance a little more where we could cast a nice red clip lamp on him from above.
The stone effect was created by using a large "car wash" sponge using different colors in different layers.

BACK YARD GRAVEYARD I

If you want to set the mood right when people arrive for your Halloween party or just to Trick-or-Treat why not try a graveyard! Over the years our set-up went through numerous configurations, but one of the first needs of a good graveyard would be grave stones. Yes, I'm sure you guessed that one.
There are numerous material options to make your gravestones (we have used everything from think cardboard to some HDU foam stolen from the dumpster of a local sign shop), but our favorite ended up being good old plywood. The nice thing about building stuff like this is that you don't need huge or perfect pieces and you can probably find some less expensive scraps at a material salvage company or even from leftovers from your own projects.
We cut all our graves will a skill saw, so it we wanted to keep the shapes simple. A cemetery is obviously the best place to find some good examples of creepy stones to draw inspiration from, but keep in mind that half a dozen scary stones will be more impressive than on Gothic masterpiece.
Decorative molding from either a hardware or craft store can add a nice 3-dimensional aspect and give your creations a little more realism. Even foofy floral elements can look sinister if you paint them with enough black!
Speaking of paint... There are numerous choices here as well. We light our sets with clip lamps and colored bulbs, but if you are depending on moonlight or some other distant light source remember that high color contrast is important for any witty inscriptions you want people to see. Glow-in-the-dark paint might work as well. Use as many faux painting techniques as you feel comfortable with; we relied heavily on wiping, dripping and sponging.

Pirated from the web

So it's been while. As I begin to prepare some of our own posts take a gander at this incredible pirate mask I found at chensational.blogspot.com.
It was created talented puppet builder Kanja Chen whose work I've been following since his Chewbacca puppet was featured in a magazine.
This mechanical mask uses a $30 hockey helmet as the base and a bike cable to control the mouth and eyebrows. It's somewhat complicated and uses some pretty specific materials, but the finished product is really impressive. Check out his tutorial at the link above. There's also a youtube video to show it working.
I'll be adding some more stuff soon, but in the meantime enjoy the pirate. It definitely is Chensational.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

I started this blog a little late in the game for this year's celebration, but I'm planning on keeping at it throughout the year, so by Halloween 2008 this will hopefully be a pretty wide-ranging resource. In the meantime, my friend "Tgtotu" does have some pretty good DYI Halloween links on his site as well as some ghost tour stories: http://www.nycstories.blog-city.com/

Oh Yeah, One more thing.
BOO!
Don't let all that candy give you too bad a stomach ache tonight.

WHAT'S A PIRATE WITHOUT A PARROT?

So you're going to a pirate themed party and you just don't feel like being one of the 30 some odd Jack Sparrows in the room. When faced with a similar problem I decided to become the favorite accessory of every pirate and piratess. ess. After all, how can you be a real pirate without a parrot on your shoulder? And Jimmy Buffet fans take note: this would probably make a swell parrothead get up for you too.

My skills at the time were pretty basic, so the materials are too:

• a green baseball cap
• 2 styrofoam balls (1 1/2" - 2" dia)
• 1 bag of green feathers
• 1 bag of assorted feathers
• yellow crafter's foam
• green red and yellow felt

As you can see, the construction is pretty basic too. I cut the upper half of the beak out of the yellow craft foam with a split down the middle on the front so I could create the curve. I wrapped the foam sides underneath the hat brim and stapled and hot glued it in place. I then cut a piece of red felt to go behind the eyes to make him a little less monochromatic.

The styrofoam balls were wired in place and I carefully drew the eyeballs in with a sharpie pen. I actually used construction paper circles to figure out the best placement for the pupils; I learned from a Jim Henson interview that if you make them ever so slightly crossed then it looks like they are focused on something and that can be the key to making your creation come alive.

After that it was a matter of layering and gluing the feathers in place. I added longer yellow feathers on the sides as pseudo eyebrows.

The body was just a series of simple tubes made in felt and stuffed with feathers glued to the wings. The lower beak was made similarly to the upper and then attached to the hat with elastic while the body hung around my neck like a necktie.

A black turtleneck and a see-through hood and I was ready to sit atop friends' shoulders for the perfect piratey photo opportunity.