Haunting Your Yard!

Well, this may come as a shocker, but we are having to down size.

I have listed our props on Craiglist.  I’m not willing to ship so only contact us if you are in the Colorado area.

http://denver.craigslist.org/for/1157575953.html

http://denver.craigslist.org/for/1157615551.html

If you see pictures on here of something you are interested in, you can contact me through the craigslist link.  We have already sold the graveyard and headstones.  The coffin and FCG are not for sale.

We are selling our storage condo where all of this was housed.  If you need one for your Halloween stuff, check it out!

We’ve had been busy getting the house ready for the Halloween party, which was this last Saturday and was a big success.

One thing we did for the party that will also be part of the walk through on Halloween night is get the voodoo room done.  These are some quick pictures Dylan took – one with flash and one without.  We’ll be adding to this a bit on Halloween night, so we’ll take some more detailed pictures then.

We are really happy with how this turned out.  The added extra element is the voodoo drums quietly playing in the background.  The room is lit only by candles.  The walls are pallets stacked on each other and screwed together.  I then hung the torn creepy cloth I made from the cheese cloth, and hung branches from my juniper bushes around.

If you are still trying to figure out what to be for Halloween, Click here to find the perfect costume.  Right now they are offering free shipping with a purchase of $65 or more. 

They also have some great props if you are not inclined to make them yourself.  We do have props that we have bought – we just modify them a bit to suit whatever setting they will be in.  Sometimes you just don’t have the time to make everything yourself.

Not to mention, some of our props – such as the zombie in the graveyard and the witch up on the roof (and the soon to be voodoo man which is being made this weekend) were made by creating the body with pvc pipe, covering it in batting, then putting a Halloween costume over it, or just a mask and using clothing we have around the house.  The zombie costume was one Dylan wore one year and is now part of a prop.

This zombie costume is a pretty common costume and it works great for this sort of thing.  So yes, we make a lot of stuff, but we don’t always do every element from scratch – we do have regular jobs!

The witch costume was an old costume of mine – and the mask (with hat attached and that great green face) was something we bought.

So while all of our headstones, mausoleum, graveyard pillars, etc were made from scratch by us, other elements in our set up were not.  Sometimes you can buy things cheaper than making them yourself – just modify them to make them your own!

I don’t know if last night was truly a full moon – but it was close enough.  And it was clear enough for Dylan to get some pictures.  He had to be out there at just the right time for the moon to be in a position to be photographed with the graveyard.

In this first picture of the graveyard and the mausoleum you can see the moon peaking out of the tree.

This next picture was kind of odd – which is why I’m posting it.  He used the flash and it almost looks like it was taken during the day and that the moon is the sun.

The lighting was just so….strange.  You can see the flood lights so you know it’s night, but it doesn’t look like night.

Next was this close up of the witch on the roof.

This one came out pretty well considering he had to zoom in.

The last pictures I wanted to post were of the flying crank ghost.  We hadn’t had a chance to take any pictures after setting her up because the weather had gotten so bad.  This is the first year we’ve actually put her outside.

You may have seen what is called “creepy cloth” online and at Halloween stores.  It’s something that could be used as curtains, or just a way to create a creepier effect.

I’ve seen it being sold for up to $1.75 a yard.  Considering this is probably one of the EASIEST things you can do yourself, to go buy it is a huge rip off.

Basically what “creepy cloth” is, is cheesecloth that is dyed and ripped up.  Cheesecloth has a TON of uses in a home haunt.

For example, I have taken a basic foam skull and glued layers of cheesecloth to it, then used fishing line to string up different parts of it, to give the effect of a flying ghost.

And when you get your own cheesecloth, you can then dye it a variety of colors to fit whatever your need is.

My recommendation would be to go to a fabric store – a real one, not a store that carries fabric in a section of the store.  You can by it in bigger quantities.  We got a box of it at Hancock Fabrics.  The normal sale price is 69 cents a yard (see – you’re saving a bunch of money already!).  We happened to get extremely lucky the day we went in – it was on sale for 33 cents a yard.

One thing we plan on doing with some of ours is hanging it from the ceiling in our garage in the voodoo scene, to give the feel of a swamp.  I got some black fabric dye and Dylan and I did a batch yesterday.  The first batch came out on the blacker/grayer side – the second, because most of the black pigment went into the first batch, came out on the bluer side.  I took a picture to show the difference.  I’ll have to play around with the colors as I’m not as thrilled with the bluer color.  We did this in a large bucket as well, which watered down the dye a bit.

I then decided to start experimenting a little with colors.  I have a huge box of this stuff, so why not.  I took some green food coloring and put a few pieces on a bowl.  I really didn’t let them sit too long.  It actually came out very interesting – almost a glow in the dark effect, so I’m interested in see what it looks like under lighting.

So really, this is one project that even the most un-crafty person can do themselves and save a bit money.  Once you start really looking at the cloth, you’ll start coming up with a lot of possible uses.   Like ripping it into strips and hanging it from props to create a mossy look.  Just think outside the box and you’ll discover that cheesecloth can be a home haunters best friend!

So this weekend Dylan finished up editing the Save the Date teaser:

Halloween Date Teaser

He did a great job!

That’s pretty much what got accomplished other than finalizing the plan for the walk through in the garage on Halloween night and going over to the Resource Recycle place and getting two cool old chairs with claw feet and a cool old door as props – all for $30.

We did go over to Spirit Halloween while in Boulder, but nothing seems to entice us any longer.  All we walked out of there with was vampire fangs for Dylan and a bottle of latex for Shane for some mask he is going to do.  Although that place is expensive so it’s a good thing that’s all we left with!

Halloween 2006 was the first year we added a moving prop! She is usually referred to in the Halloween world as a Flying Crank Ghost, or FCG.

She really is an amazing prop. Unfortunately, we didn’t get the best of pictures of her in 2006 – we really seemed to drop the ball in the picture department in general and we lost some pictures due to a computer crashing.

We had built a whole mineshaft with walls that I created using chicken wire and papermache that were made to look like cave walls. I think I spent almost two months working on those walls. Some had bones that were made to look as if they were embedded in the stone. Some had dynamite sticks (made out of toilet paper tubes) sticking out.

It took multiple layers of papermaching, then painting a base coat, then adding some other effects to make them look aged. They looked okay in the daylight, but looked great in the darker lighting.

We also had prop skeletons in the cave and panning for gold pans, rocks, railroad tracks leading out of the cave, etc. We even went to the trouble of buying a bird cage, aging it, and putting a fake bird in there, upside down, so that it seemed as if the gases had been what took all the miners.

Right now you’re probably thinking, “Boy, I’d love to see pictures of that!”. Well, I would too – but they all seemed to have gotten lost in the later computer crash. All I ended up with was pictures of the building processes.

One cool new prop we made for the front porch was a skeleton wrapped in spider webbing.

That was nice hanging from the ceiling of the garage for a few weeks until we started decorating the outside.

As usual, it made all of our neighbors wonder about us.

I don’t want to say 2006 was a bust because it wasn’t. I was our best year up to that point. I just don’t have the pictures to prove it!

Oh well. Onward and upward as they would say…..

I’m going to attempt to give a basic “how to” of the process of building our pillars for our graveyard fence. There are a lot of great ideas out there on the web – different ways to build pillars. Some which are made of foam and very lightweight. We would eventually like to redo ours.

First off, one of the biggest issues we have here in Colorado is the wind. We can get hurricane force gusts coming off of the mountains. This makes prop building more difficult as we always have to think in terms of worst case winds and build things and set up things in the graveyard with that always in mind. We don’t want our props to end up in Kansas!

The year we built them we were also on a tight budget. Well, we are always on a tight budget. If we didn’t watch ourselves we could easily spend hundreds of dollars each year on Halloween. That year a lot of new houses were going up close by – and dumpster diving was how we got much of our materials. If you shouldhappen to use that method of acquiring materials be careful to ONLY get materials that are IN a dumpster. Otherwise it is not free game – even if it’s sitting next to the dumpster.

So we worked with what we had – which was a lot of framing material. Some of which was perfect for building our pillars.

We built 2 tall, main entrance pillars and 4 shorter pillars. What helps the pillars stay upright being that they are so tall, is a couple of things. First, since they are attached to other pillars via the fencing, they are not stand alone. We also stake them with metal stakes to give them a little extra stability.

As far as fencing goes – we did not make it. There are some techniques out there that use pvc pipe to make some pretty realistic fencing. We decided to go with real rod iron. We were able to get pieces similar enough from a local recycling place. So storage and hauling them around can be quite difficult, but they are sturdy. One of the problems we have had is that up until this year, the elementary bus stop was in front of our house. The kids loved looking at our setup while waiting for the bus, but they had a tendency to “hang” on the fencing. Which is why we chose something more stable, and the pieces of fencing are screwed into the sides of the pillars.

To finish the pillars we did some basic painting. One great way to get large amounts of paint is to see what colors they have at the local home improvement store in the “oops paint” section. You’ll save a lot of money. We did not learn that until after using spray paint on these which is very expensive. We did gray first, then did touches of black and a greenish paint to give them a different look.

Since then, this past year, I redid the pillars. I did a different paint job in which I put black paint in a line, spray it with water, then do a drag with a paint brush. It gives things an older look (I use the same technique on our tombstones and on the mausoleum). This is an example of how they looked this year. They are not quite as dark overall but look so much better at night. I also added moss.

Now back to the original year we first built them. I have mentioned that we build most of what you see. There are some exceptions. We do buy inexpensive Halloween decor at local stores and usually modify them. So these skulls in a cage we got at Big Lots one year. I have since added moss to these as well. These hang from the two tall entrance pillars. It is the small details that make the prop in my opinion. The crosses you see on the front of the pillars were also purchased at Big Lots and have also had moss added to them to give an old feeling.

No matter how well you construct your props they will need touching up and repair just about every year. Moss is a great way to hide flaws and things that happen in general while being moved around and stored. Keep bags of it on hand – it comes in very handy.

So that’s pretty much how we built our graveyard fence. I will say, the rod iron does add an extremely realistic touch. If you have a way to get a hold of some and a way to store it, I would really consider it. Each year we seem to do a little something more to add to them, which is always part of the prop process!

Halloween 2005….the big addition that year was our mausoleum. It was quite the spectacle and a little, well, sick, considering we made it tall enough for Dylan or me to stand in. We also put our family name, Cooper, across the top.

Little big of lighting and a ghost hanging inside and it looked pretty cool.

We slowly made more handmade tombstones, and replaced the wooden ones.

The previous year was the first time we had done a “scene” in the garage, that is only on display Halloween night. It was very thrown together – last minute – but ended up being a big hit because we were able to have more interaction with our trick-o-treaters and the parents.

What we did was sit outside in our scene – that year it had been a mad scientist lab of sorts – and served hot apple cider and handed out candy.

In 2005 we stepped it up – a lot. We built walls to block off the rest of the garage and created a haunted saloon. It really turned out

great. We sat behind the “bar” and served the apple cider that year.

We had things down to the detail – the skeleton poker players dressed as cowboys with chaps, wanted posters that were aged, and the old timey jugs.

Huge hit, but we were beginning to have a storage nightmare. We had to go out after Halloween that year and rent a storage unit for our Halloween props. We weren’t just decorating the outside – we also decorate the inside as well. We were quickly running out of room!