Set Up Almost Complete for The Yard of the Living Dead 2011

Well, tonight was the perfect night for cemetery fog.  The air was slightly warm and there was no wind.  I was able to make some really creepy fog without any ice in the chiller.  I have just a couple more projects and finishing touches that I want to complete before our first "lights on" night on Sunday.

Man, I love creepy cemetery fog!  I only hope that the weather stays like this for the next two weekends and the big night.

Teaser Reveal

Well, the minion and I spent a few hours working in the garage today and were able to put the PVC spirals and the random wire hanger bits together to make...

...some curved brackets and hangers for our Halloween lanterns.

The curved brackets are attached toward the top of the fence columns.  There are two curved brackets on each fence column.  I also made some toppers for the fence columns today.  I think it gives the fence columns a more finished look.

Here are a couple of pictures of the lanterns as it started to get darker.  I was able to play around with my webcaster gun today too. 

Another Teaser!

Spent a few hours with my minion watching Battle: LA and Priest while we straightened out a ton of wire hangers.  We bent some and rolled some.

Hmmm.  What the heck could they be for?



Teaser Alert!

Spent a few quality hours out in the garage melting some PVC and killing some brain cells.

More to come...



Cemetery Fence 2.0 Is a Go.

The first day of October was warm and sunny.  I spent a few hours with my minion finishing the assembly and painting of the last four or five cemetery fence sections.  We got the fence set up and in place.  Next Saturday we will tackle the fence finials, lantern hangers, and maybe the fence column toppers.  My minion wants to try his hand at tombstone carving and I have a corpse or two to make.  The last few Saturdays before Halloween are going to be busy.  I hope we continue to have weather like we did today.

Here are a few shots of the cemetery fence as it stands right now.  The first is looking East to West.  The second is looking West to East.  The third is a straight-on shot at a full fence section.  The construction is scrap PVC lengths for the vertical bars, scrap 1 X 4's for the top two horizontal bars, and scrap 2 X 4's for the bottom horizontal bars.  Everything for this fence (including the columns) was free scrap except for the brackets bolted to the columns and the paint.  Hopefully the extra time that it took to "over-engineer" this cemetery fence will translate to a long life for it.

Here are a couple of shots with Emma Sue the littlest zombie added for scale.  The fence looks to be strong enough to keep even the most determined of the living dead safely confined.



Fangs For The Memories

I was at the grocery store running an errand and was looking for some Reeses peanut butter pumpkins for my wife when I ran across some candy wax lips with fangs in the Halloween section.  I showed these to my youngest daughter and she had no idea what they were.  I of course bought five sets, one for each of my four kids and one for me.  It took quite a bit of convincing for my kids to believe that they were really candy.

I think that the moustache wax lips are new.  I have no recollection of ever seeing them as a kid.  My upper lip is naturally folically challenged, so I bought a moustache for me.  I think it looks great!  And it's grape flavored.

I Finally Have a Minion!

My little brother has offered to spend the next five Saturdays in the garage with me getting the yard ready for this Halloween.  Yesterday we spent the day working on the new and hopefully improved cemetery fence.  We were able to get most of the fence sections assembled and painted.  Next week we will finish the fence and set it up that evening.  Then we will be moving on to some fun stuff like lighting and tombstones.  Hopefully we will get into a little corpsing.  I have high hopes for how much will be accomplised now that I have a minion of my very own.

Here's my minion running the paint sprayer.

YARDSALE!

So, as I was driving back from taking my son to kindergarten today, I passed a house that has been having a yard sale for the past week and a half.  Today I noticed some Halloween items that weren't visible on previous days.  I stopped to take a look.  The proprietess of the yard sale informed me that the Halloween items would not be for sale until Wednesday, but I was free to take a look.  As I was perusing her wares, she asked me if my back was sound. I replied that it was and she said that she would be willing to let me buy Halloween merchandise early and make me an extra good deal if I would be willing to move some heavy boxes for her.  I spent about ten minutes moving boxes and about twenty minutes selecting my purchases and left with all of this for only five bucks.

These little hanging skeletons will be great for indoor decorating.

You can never have enough bleeding skull taper candles.

I am going to make a body for this oversized skull.  He'll look good in the cemetery.

A couple of blucky skulls and a really nice resin anatomical model skull.

I've always wanted one of these guys.  It's amazing how realistic the flame effect is on these.

Doodle Time

Now that I am back in school and find myself sitting in classes for up to two hours at a time, I am starting to accumulate doodles.

These are some MATH 1010 inspired doodles.  I think I will chronicle my doodles (as crude and amateurish as they are) here as a way to gauge my overall level of boredom with school.

Tombstone Update

Here are some progress pictures of my new tombstones for this year.

These pictues show the tombstones after a base coat of grey exterior latex paint.

These pictures show the tombstones after a blackwash with some watered down black outdoor latex paint and then a drybrush with some watered down grey outdoor latex paint the same color as the base coat.  The last picture is of a tombstone that was meant to be just for practice, but it turned out looking OK.  I decided to make it part of the cemetery this year.  I still have some weathering and maybe some moss to add to these tombstones.  I will post more pictures when they are done.