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.

Cemetery Fence 2.0

Some of you may remember that last year I scored about 10 of these plastic columns from my employer.  My intention was to use them as fence columns for a cemetery fence.  I put together a bunch of eight-foot fence sections using PVC pipe (also free from work) and scrap 1 x 3 wood.  I used small metal brackets to attach the fence sections directly to the columns.  All this was done very last minute and while it looked good (we got a lot of compliments from people driving by), it wasn't extremely solid.  Now for the error part of the trial and error system.  The columns are hollow plastic and are in two sections.  the bottom section is about 4 feet tall and is open at the bottom.  the top section is about another 2 feet tall and is open at the top.  One week before Halloween we had a major rainstorm.  During the night, the top sections of the fence columns filled up with water, making them top heavy.  When the wind hit it was all over.  We woke up to find every fence column tipped over and many of the fence sections broken.  I threw out all of the fence sections and put the columns away (only after cutting a hole in the bottom of all the top sections so that water could not collect in them), vowing to learn from my mistakes in the next year.  Well next year is now.

I decided that the surface of the columns was too uneven to attach the fence sections directly.  I bolted a section of 2 x 4 to the columns with a nice wide bracket at the top and bottom.  The height of the 2 x 4 is the same as the space between the bottom and middle rail of the fence sections.  I squirted some Great Stuff behind the 2 x 4 to fill in all of the nooks and crannies and give the 2 x 4 a more solid base.

Here you can see how the fence sections will sit on the brackets.  There is still a lot to do on this project.  I will post more on my progress in the next couple of days.

Tombstone Update

Well, I finally finished carving and engraving my first batch of styrofoam tombstones.  I used stencils that I made with my wife's Cricut machine for the lettering.  All of the detailing was done with a soldering iron.  Some very minimal shaping was done with a hacksaw blade.  Each of these tombstones is named for each of my four kids.

This tombstone reads:  Samuel (our oldest son) and then:  Sam Bones (his nickname because of how freakishly skinny he is).  His cause of death is listed as:  wasted away.  The skull detail was made by cutting the back from a Great Stuff foam skull that I had laying around.  I attached it with some hot glue.  The shaping around the skull was done with a hacksaw blade.

This tombstone reads:  Abigail (our oldest daughter) and then:  Abbiecadabra (this seemed almost too cute; but I went with it anyway).  Her cause of death is listed as:  burned at the stake (duh).  The pentagram detail was just one that I found with a Google image search for pentagram.  I pretty much just free handed it with a Sharpie and then engraved it with a soldering iron.

This tombstone reads:  Noah (our youngest son) and then:  Noah Constrictor (this was his nickname when he was a toddler because he was a major hugger.  He liked to get his arms around you and just squeeze as tight as he could).  His cause of death is listed as:  stuffed and mounted (bummer).  The snake detail is based loosely on the logo for the TV show Millennium.  I did quite a bit of detail work with the soldering iron trying to get the snake to look more three dimensional.  It should really pop out after it is painted.  Again I did a little shaping in the center with a hacksaw blade.

This tombstone reads:  Emma (our youngest daughter) and then:  Emma Sue The Littlest Zombie (I know it's a mouthful; but trust me, it fits her).  Her cause of death is listed as:  her fate is unknown.  This was the simplest design out of all four tombstones.  I just did a Google image search for girl silhouette.  All the detail work was done with a soldering iron.

These tombstones will get a coat or two of Dry-Lok and then a nice paint job (hopefully this week).

Put a Lid on That Mud.

I was toying with the idea of putting together a monster mud prop this year until I spent an entire weekend retexturing the house...

I am officially not in the mood.