Countdown to Halloween: Two Dummies & a Grave Yard.

Round two of our countdown to Halloween involves building life-sized dummies, spooky dummies. Last year the kiddo and I had one not-so imposing seated spook on our front porch. We had intentionally toned the dummy down so that it wasn't too creepy (no blood, no uber fancy rigged recordings or motions and a fairly human looking mask).

Slouchy cat-squashed spook 2010

 However, apparently we did too good of a job toning it down and had one poor kid absolutely convinced that it was a real dude chilling on the porch pretending to be fake, waiting for unsuspecting kids to walk up to the door and yell "BOO!" (paranoid much, kid?). He was so scared he refused to come to the door even after his dad had forged ahead, knocked on the door & clarified that no, the dude in the mask wasn't going to shout "boo!" and scare the crud out of his kid. I call that winning at Halloween ;)

It was a given that we would be making another seated spook this year and the kiddo was dead-set on it being Frankenstein. Using old newspapers saved from the blue bin and one big pillow to make up the torso to help 'Frank' have a little form we started the assembly.

We were feeling pretty proud of ourselves, nodding our heads at nothing in particular giving ourselves high-fives and all that when the thought dawned on me.. what about that other part of the yard?

What could we possibly do to ultra creepify that glaringly empty, completely un-creepy spot of lawn? Believe it or not, it included wrapping myself in duct tape. I actually had one of these forms pre-made and hanging around for sewing purposes about three months ago. In an impulsive mass house purge it got dismantled and thrown away/recycled. Hindsight is always 20/20, so not being one to 'cry over spilt milk' I made another, slightly less perfect version.

Can you see where I am going with this? It might look eyebrow-raisingly ridiculous but I promise when its finished it comes together like whoa. I used a half assembled coat tree to support the [minimal] weight of the torso as well as provide a wide base so it could be free standing. Stuffing the form with tissue paper, old shopping bags, newspaper and what-have-yous so it would have an actual shape rather than just looking deflated, it was time to work on some limbs.

Using old wrapping paper tubes as the structure I attached them to a coat hanger inside the form with nothing more extravagant that twist ties. Again using tissue paper (and tape) to bulk out the limbs what I was left with looked like some teenaged concoction of goth-punk couture.

Doesn't look too spooky, yet. Covering the brightly coloured arms with strips of black garbage bags things were starting to look more witchy.

With the body 90% complete it was time to get to work on the hands and head. Building the head was by far the most difficult part, it had to be solid enough that it wouldn't blow away, yet light enough that it didn't flop over, as well as maintaining some semblance of realism. The hands I managed to figure out by painting some latex gloves that had been hanging around and filling them with scrunched paper to mimic digits.The head is densely scrunched tissues taped to the coat hanger surrounded by less densely scrunched tissue paper to form a semi-round shape; then painted and adorned with creepy eyes (the nose is also squished tissues that are actually affixed by a screw to avoid flopping).

Wrap the torso in strip after strip of garbage bags until all the duct tape is covered, tie the excess around the neck like a cape and voila, witch on a coat stand. It was time for the final stages.

 Taking the whole thing outside and positioning it in the yard it looked just a little ridiculous, what with the coat stand looking like it was shoved up her...  Thank goodness it wasn't left like that long!

The one thing we don't actually have in our masses of Halloween supplies are wigs. Wigs get ruined fairly quickly it seems when kids are involved. So for the time being we left her bald and earless. But we did give her an evil kitty and  we're still looking for a wooden broom to complete the visual. 

Pretty spook-tastic if I do say so myself. If I could wave a magic wand and add anything there would definitely be a bubbling cauldron. With the dummies out of the way  It was time to step up our game. Next up was the finishing touches, the gore-factor, the creep-tastic goodness. It was time to create our own unholy zombie-fied bone yard. That's right, our very own grave yard (or zombie playground).

I literally just threw the bones out of the box and across the yard.

oh noes! zombies!

The tombstones are just painted frozen juice cardboard flats weighed down with rocks that we 'inherited' from my mother when the kiddo had his first 'real' Halloween a few years ago (and by real, I mean he can actually recall it). Pretty awesome right? But we weren't quite finished, how could we be without hanging some cobwebs, or jimmy rigging some ghosts up in the trees?

But the fun didn't stop there, oh no. Raiding our scrap wood stash I quickly whipped up this spooky sign and jammed it into the ground near the street. 

Honestly, I love how excited kids get over the holidays -- it is sheer wide-eyed enjoyment. I love being able to help create great memories for my son and his friends, even if it only is for one day. Although some of the paper stuff will probably get ruined being out in the weather, I would rather it be out in the yard where all the trick-or-treaters can enjoy it rather than cluttering up my already demo-cluttered interior.