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For the past few years Frightfest BC has been taking part in a Halloween theme weekend at the Fort Langley Campground.

Our weekend consists of a few quick make and takes, and creating a haunted house for the public, a zombie walk through town followed by a stop at the Fort Pub for refreshments.

Members arrive from all over BC and Alberta and even Washington, their vehicles stuffed full of props. Everyone helps out and by Saturday afternoon we have a haunt full of actors, sound, and lighting.

Exhausting but so fun!!
Here are a few pictures from this years haunt.

More can be located on Flickr.

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I took very few pictures of this guys being made, but here is one pre-hair picture I found of him in my camera’s internal memory. This is during painting…

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1. Mr. Hemlock Dench
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3. Halloween Tree

It rained, hard… I already posted a few rainy pictures. The props all held up fantastically, no paper mache fatalities thanks to sealing everything. Though I live on the Canadian west coast so we expect it to rain here.

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The only thing I had to alter because of the rain was the hag’s cauldron. The cauldron, like almost all my props is made of paper mache. It has a faux liquid toppper, and inside has a blacklight. The rain was seeping in under the faux topper and pooling inside. I had to drill a hole in the bottom of the cauldron for it to drain.

Luckily the weather cleared by about 6:30pm and a nice fog filled the neighborhood.
More pictures to come…..

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This project began with a polyurethane skull, but I cut it and carved at it so much I might as well not have used it to begin with. Pulp mache base and some Paperclay on the main face features. This is the first project I’ve applied Paperclay to. I have to say, it sure is nice to work with.

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I had sculpted her face last year before Halloween, and then she sat in the basement… bald, grumpy, and only half a body… collecting dust for MONTHS. Originally I thought I might make 3 of these hags, and this one was going to be leaning on her broom. Then while camping one of my kids found a nice walking stick and we decided to bring it home for the hag to use.

I didn’t take many picture of her as I made her. Her face was pink because of the mache pulp I was using.

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I sculpted a head for it recently.

I will make it some hands later today as I want to take it to a local Halloween gathering this weekend. Before Halloween I’ll probably add some sculpted arms, but for now he can wear a long sleeve shirt. I’ll post the finished crawler at some point.

Quick run down on how it was made:
Cast a foam skull
Carve a foam skull, adjust jaw line
Paper mache basic form, let dry
Add pulp mache, let dry
Apply a sealant to mache
Paint
Apply finish sealant
Add some hair.

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I made these shelves to replace the broken one

I picked up some old metal shelves from a lady who was throwing stuff out. These shelves desperately needed some help… they looked nothing like what I wanted.

I decided I would first cover them in cardboard. I am a cardboard pack-rat, so I had plenty to use. I fitted the shelves with it using masking tape to adhere each piece to the shelves.

Next I added cheap dollar store night-lites to the top of each shelf of each unit. As I had made a cardboard ‘lip’ on each shelf, these were completely covered from view. I am not electrician – and do not know enough about such things to trust tampering with cords, so I bought small dollar store extension cords and wired up all the lights, taping down the cords to the cardboard along the seams to hide them all.

Then I used a roll of black paper and basically wrapped the shelves in it. I used packing tape on one shelf unit, and then ran out. For the second shelf unit I used masking tape. It worked much better, as the paper had a bit of a waxy finish. I made sure to secure ALL seams with tape.

The shelves then got a light coat of flat black spray paint to cover the masking and packing tape – again the masking tape worked better here as it takes the spray paint easier, and shows less after painted.

I now had a set of black shelves….. really plain black shelves. I decided they needed to look like old wood.

How to paint wood grain:

For this process I used a spoonful of white latex paint, and about 2 cups of water, mixed together. Then taking a 2″ paintbrush dipped into the watered down paint, I painted out the shape of my wood planks. Using the technique pictured below:

Brush dipped into paint mixed with water.

In some planks I added knots in the wood by twisting the paint brush in a circle over the still wet paint. Run paint brush along each side of knot lightly.

Next dip brush into the watered down paint, right to the bottom of the container where the paint has settled. Use shop rag to dab off excess water and paint. Starting at outer edges lightly brush inwards to create wood grain. Turn brush sideways to get more defined lines.

Let the paint dry

Using a sharpie or other black marker, outline and add some detail
this makes the board stand out.

Thats it. All done!

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Mr. Hemlock Dench is my cemetery grounds keeper or caretaker.
He is a knavish, creepy little man. Bow-legged and hunch-backed, he grins fiendishly out into the darkness at passers by….

Mr. Dench was my first project for 2007. This was the first full bodied prop I attempted. He is made almost entirely of recycled materials.

Making Hemlock Dench

I made Hemlock to enter in the $20 Dollar Prop Contest on HauntForum for 2007, so I had to keep cost in mind while building. Building a prop with 20 dollars worth of supplies is easier said than done. You can find yourself creatively limited and rethinking your design to accommodate the price.

I began with the face, using a foam skull I had made years previous. These skulls are easy to make and very cheap.

I decided the most cost effective way to tackle this was to mold a face around the skull, and make a mache mask casting. This way when forming the face I wouldn’t need to use as much paper mache pulp to build up the face features, and cut costs.

I covered the entire skull in tin foil, to keep anything from sticking to it. Then I used plasticine to form a rough face. I put a plastic bag over the face and applied a few layers of basic paper mache over it to form my mask. After it had dried thoroughly I removed it.

Then I removed the plastic bag, gave my son back his Plasticine, and stripped the tin foil off the foam skull, setting it aside for the eyes.

Next I took a very sharp knife and cut the lower jaw off the foam skull. I carved out all the spaces between the teeth on the upper and lower jaw and knocked out a few.

I painted the teeth and gums. After I was satisfied with the paint I added a thin coat of Spar Varnish. Next I made a tongue to fit inside the lower jaw out of masking tape and paper mache. I didn’t know if I was going to have the tongue showing at all, but I thought I might as well add it just in case. It only took a few minutes to form. I painted it with the same paint as the gums.

Eyes.
Cheap eyes. I made polymer clay eyeballs. The insides of each eye were the left over tin foil from the skull.

Next I cut out the sockets and put together -skull, teeth and mask over top, it wasn’t sitting quite right. So I shaved off some of the bone structure of the skull, and everything fit better.

Then I taped together everything I had made. Once secured, I added coarse mache pulp to build up the face features, and then used a finer mache pulp to get some detail. This process took some time, as each layer had to be left to dry thoroughly. My main tools: my fingers, and a bamboo skewer.

I added ears using tin foil and masking tape and more mache pulp. Once I had the basic shape of ears, I taped them into place, and then built up the detail using pulp mache.

The Hands.
This was a 20 dollar prop – so I had to figure a way to make hands for very cheap. I used packing peanuts because I happened to have some from a package I received in the mail. I taped them together to form the shape of hands, using 5 pieces of florists wire cut in half, one for each finger. I secured a 45 degree PVC elbow joint at each wrist. Then I used my mache pulp to build up the hands. This was done over a few sessions, as the mache needed time to dry between applications.

I formed a body from PVC. With my heat gun I warped his back to give him a hunch and his legs to make him bow legged. After tinkering with his stance a little I secured his limbs and positioned his head. Then I added some mache to form his neck. And bulked out his body with newspaper, bags and masking tape. I coated his body with a thin layer of mache and blended his neck and arms in with the remaining mache pulp.

Then I painted him. I use mostly acrylic paint from the mis-tint section of hardware stores, its very cheap. To these I add other acrylic paint to get the base colors I want, and I free hand mix the rest as I go.

Clothing
I made his pants and shirt from rags and some filter cloth. I tied the shirt material on, it’s a big knot on the back, and his pants are basically tubes formed from black filter clothe, which I then stapled together… pretty low tech. His jacket was from my own Halloween costume a few years ago.

His hair was originally part of a witch’s hat that did not survive our 2005 party. His eyebrows were made from a cheap disposable paint brush. Gluing hair on is not my idea fun… I almost left him bald.

His lantern was scrounged from my mother in laws basement while she was doing some early spring cleaning. I added some paint to tarnish it up. Before Halloween I will redo his lantern to remove the real flame and make it safe, but for the 20 Prop Challenge it has to stay as is because of cost.

I was walking out back to find a stick for him to hold, and passing the fire pit I saw that my spouse had broken a rake, and the top of the handle was in the burn pile. I brought it up to the house and cut it to size.

Definitely helped finding trash to incorporate into this project! I’m happy with how my new repulsive grounds keeper turned out.

On a personal note…
Thank you to Kurt for naming him and constantly telling me to get off my a$$ and make a prop.

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