I Finally Finished My First Groundbreaker!

Well, after an interminable amount of time stuck with "analysis paralysis", I finally got something new finished for The Yard of the Living Dead this year.  I used tips, tricks, and inspiration from various sources on the web and the forums.  This groundbreaker is one hundred percent homemade from the paper mache skull to the cardboard ribcage.  Here are a few pictures of him in the garage.

 

I will get a few more pictures of him after he is placed in The Yard of the Living Dead later today.  One thing I learned during the construction of this groundbreaker is that I suck at making hands, the thumbs especially.



Tin Punched Lanterns

I toss about 15-20 of these gold cans in the recycling bin at work every day. I decided to rescue a couple and try making some tin punched lanterns. I have put out the call on the forums for links to cool Halloween"ish" patterns. Hopefully I can create something worthy of The Yard of the Living Dead.

The Yard of the Living Dead 2011

Here are some shots of The Yard of the Living Dead taken late Halloween night.

Everything looked pretty good this year.  Our display is still fairly small; but we spent a lot of time doing things the right way.  Our cemetery fence looks authentic, is strong, and can be reused year after year.  We ditched the cardboard tombstones and replaced them with styrofoam tombstones that look better and last longer.  We spent time creating a satisfying fog effect.  All in all I think we have a good foundation to build upon in the coming years.  Next year I would like to create a more integrated LED lighting system and incorporate sound as well.  I want to finish the corpses that I started this year and my wife wants to add some cemetery gates and an archway.  Lots to do and my wife has made me promise not to procrastinate on anything.  This blog will be the place where I post pictures and progress reports on preparations for The Yard of the Living Dead 2012.  Thanks to everyone who checked out my blog this year.  I promise to make next year even more entertaining.

The Rib Bone's Connected to... Some Other Bone

I wanted to put a full corpse in the cemetery this year; but time was just not on my side.  I will put together a corpse torso and have it "peeking" out from behind a tombstone.  I followed the steps outlined on Christian Hanson's video "Make You Own Scratch Built Corpse" and made a ribcage this week.  In his video, Christian uses a plastic 5 gallon bucket to make his ribcage.  I am super cheap, so I just used cardboard.  I think it will do for my purposes.

Here is Emma Sue The Littlest Zombie modeling the completed ribcage.  I will add a PVC pipe spine and arms and corpse it out this weekend.  More pictures to follow.

I Decided to Give My Minion a Hand... and an Arm

My minion is busy building his first styrofoam tombstones.  He is very excited to put them in the cemetery.  One of his tombstones' epitaphs describes the fate of a man who was buried alive.  He wanted to have an arm reaching up from the grave in front of this tombstone.  I slapped together a quick newspaper hand and arm for him to use.

I found a thread on the Halloween Forum by FearingtonHouse that talks about a super cheap and fast corpsing method using only outdoor latex paint and paper towels.  I am going to give it a try tomorrow and post some pictures of the results.

Quick and Cheap Coffin Creep

I made a coffin from scrap wood for the cemetery a couple of years ago.  I have since turned it into a hiding place for my fog machine and fog chiller.  I have always thought that it was a waste not to have some kind of corpse or something inside it; but the fog machine and fog chiller occupy all of the available space.  This year, as a quickie, afterthought kind of thing I made a couple of forearms and hands.  I stuck them inside the coffin so that they were lifting the lid just enough to stick a foam skull inside the coffin resting on top of the fog chiller. 

This prop is quite cheesy; but I wanted the coffin to be more like a prop than just a housing for the fog machine and fog chiller.

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.

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).

Fun With Foam!

Those of you who have read previous posts on this blog know that originally, all of the tombstones in my cemetery were made from cardboard.  My reasoning for this was that at work I had access to plentiful and free cardboard.  Last season, however was unusually wet. This made for some very squishy tombstones.  This year I have decided to make the switch to foam tombstones.  I purchased a couple of 2 inch thick, 4 foot by 8 foot sheets of pink foam at the Home Depot.  Shortly thereafter, I stumbled upon 26 sheets of 2 1/2 inch thick, 16 inch by 45 1/2 inch white beaded foam and half of a sheet of the 2 inch thick pink foam in a dumpster at a construction site between work and home.  The white beaded foam is kind of hard to work with and messy so I decided to use these sheets to make some filler stones with a very basic shape and only details that could be added with a soldering iron which is the least messy method of working with this foam.  If I follow the method that Terra uses, sandwiching two sheets of foam together for each tombstone this should give me 13 good filler tombstones for my cemetery. 

I will make some tombstones with a flat top, 

some with a rounded top,

 And some with a pointed top.

I am always trying to give my kids a reason to hang out with me in the garage.  We decided that there were too many pieces of scrap foam going to waste.  We remedied this problem by making some little foam mementos that I know my wife will absolutely hate and probably not allow in the house.  This was good practice for me using the soldering iron to apply lettering and detail to the foam.  The Batman insignia in the second picture is my favorite, followed by the Super Mario mushroom.  I will use the pink foam for more detailed tombstones.

Power Squid Redoux

 I saw this little guy at the university book store as I was buying some books this semester.  I am always in need of more outlets in the garage so I purchased him and brought him home.

 Just look at that cute face.  He definately needs a makeover.

 All I needed was a few minutes and my trusty Super Sharpie to transform something innocuous into a thing of beauty.

Here's a close-up of the finished skull.  Much more presentable if you ask me.

Witch Jars, Halloween Lanterns, or Whatever.

Okay, like everybody else out there, I took one look at Pumpkinrot's witch jars and decided that I needed some for my display.  I love the creepy atmosphere that you get from a candle inside a dirty, ancient-looking glass holder with some questionable stains dripping down the sides.  The only problem I could see with Pumpkinrot's method was that my haunt is of the classic cemetery style, and the mason jar look was a little too "back-woods".  So I decided to find a glass container that looked as if it was made for the sole purpose of holding a candle.

I work next door to a company that recycles glass for use in its products.  They have bins out in front of their facility for the public to drop off glass items.  I am a shameless dumpster diver and frequently stroll by the bins looking for interesting items.  I found a bottle that was wider and taller than normal.  I thought that this would make a great candle holder if I could just remove the top.

I soaked the bottle in warm, soapy water to aid in removing the label.

I found a product online called Ephrem's Bottle Cutter Kit.  It has a variety of different uses for anyone looking to repurpose glass bottles or jars.

The bottle cutter has three rollers and one cutting wheel, making it useful for cutting only round bottles and jars.

The bottle is placed on the rollers so that the desired location of the score rests on the cutting wheel.  Constant, even pressure is placed on the bottle and it is rotated clockwise until the bottle is scored completely around its circumference and the cutting wheel begins to make a grinding sound.  Be careful not to over-rotate the bottle.  This can cause a bad or uneven score and can decrease the longevity of the cutting wheel.

Here is the bottle with a nice, even scoring line around its top.

Now, contrary to the name of the kit, Ephrem's Bottle Cutting Kit does not actually cut the bottle; but rather scores the glass of the bottle.  In order to remove the bottle's top, heat must be applied to the glass along the scoring line.  I lay the bottle on its side for this step.

Next, I place a candle beneath the bottle with the flame under the scoring line.  I tried to do this step with a butane torch; but it heated up the glass too quickly and caused it to fragment.  The bottle is slowly rotated, heating up the scoring line.  Try to do this as evenly as possible.

Here is the bottle with its top removed.  The cut edges of the glass are extremely sharp.  I use coarse sandpaper to rough up the edges.  I also remove the ring of soot left by the candle.

Here is another departure from Pumpkinrot's method.  He uses a coat of diluted white glue to cloud the surface of the glass.  I decided to try good, old-fashioned mud; mostly because I am cheap and mud is free but also because deep down I am always looking for an excuse to play in the mud.

After being dunked in the mud, the bottle rests on some newspaper and dries overnight.

Here is the nice, crusty bottle.

Using an old rag, I wipe the surface of the bottle down to leave it with a more irregular coating of dirt.

To give the bottle some color, I use black, red, and green paint.  I have some nice, fat brushes and I water the paint down a lot.  I start with the black and go over the entire surface of the bottle inside and out.  Next, I use the red and green on the inside surface of the bottle and drag the paintbrush along to rim, letting the colors randomly drip down the inside of the glass.

Here is the finished lantern with flash.

Here is the finished lantern without flash.