A "Couple" of Ground Breakers

I had such a GREAT weekend. I'll post more later about that, but most importantly... I finished my first project(s) of the year (so behind).

Last week I mentioned the beginning stage of "hacking" a certain store-bought ground breaker. These guys were super cheap, one was picked up from a store - after halloween sale, the other came from a lot-for-sale off of Craigstlist. What to do, what to do... so I searched the internet for inspiration. Came across this lady.

I mentioned before in a previous blog how I mangled the head here. I used the same technique. Took the head off the body, removed the hair, cut the styrofoam and used paper towels and carpet adhesive. (note: I used Bounty, should have used Viva - no bumps/designs in paper towels are best). Waited a good week for that to dry, then painted their faces with craft paint and used polyurethane to seal.

In the meantime while their heads were drying. I gathered up some of the extra red velvet I had from some curios I have been working on. I also grabbed some black cheese cloth, along with little items I had in my craft/sewing box (the black satin rose). No sewing required on my ghoul-friend, just hot glue and used my imagination. Went into my costume bin and grabbed an old witch wig. Asked my son if I could have his old suit tie which worked perfect for the guy-ghoul. I used water and craft paint to make the tie dirty and used a dull razor blade to give it a grungy effect. Added plenty of moss on the bottom of their torsos as well as sporadically on their body, hands, face and head. To give it that fresh ground breaker look.

I can not begin to tell you how happy I was after I finished her.

Below you can see start to finish photos.

Inspiration

So I took some inspirational shots this spring. Thought it would be pretty witch'n to share.

First 3 shots of the skeleton in the cage
were taken here at the Georgia Renaissance Festival.

These next few shots were taken at our trip to

Disney World at the Magic Kingdom.

I liked the stacked effect they did with the skulls.

I wish I would have taken a better shot or more

of the moss that grows on the trees in Central Florida.

Spanish moss grows in the masses there.

I always put spanish moss in my tree

during halloween time and drape it across my tombstones too.

This was on one of the rides, skull on a stick, what's not to love.

Of course a nice shot of the head hunter.

Because shrunken heads are just delightful!

*must have one of my own, soon*

This was the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. They re-vamped

the ride quite a few years ago to include Johnny Depp

(sooo, hot want to touch the hiney).

Apparently the 60 year old lady behind me thought so, too.

These last two are a little blurry, but you get the point...

Summer is finally here! One bloody hot summer to go. Witch (lol) means our favorite time of the year is not so far away.

With love,

Madame Jen

OCD

Only 7 more months till Halloween. Yes, I think I have OCD when it comes to Halloween. I've been thinking about Halloween for well over several months now. Where to find bargains online and how to build props of my very own. I want to improve my Halloween display and make it more realistic looking. I've been on this website non-stop http://www.halloweenmonsterlist.info/ gathering up new ideas. I love when people share their projects!!!

Rewinding back to October 31, 2009, we had a Halloween party that turned out great, I used dry ice for my very first time. Next time I wont make so many sweets. I had so many cupcakes and cake left over. All my ghoulish guests loved the hot food I served. A fellow witch by the name of Jessica shared her receipe for pumpkin seeds, they turned out awesome, I winded up making several to-go-bags. Since Halloween lands on a Sunday this year, I am considering having my party on the 29th or the 30th. Oh and note to self not to purchase so much candy, we still have bags hiding in a closet.

Shopping the weekend after Halloween to catch deals! I picked up some spine chilling stuff. Tried to hide most of the things and bought some more plastic storage bins so Tim wouldn't see. *witch cackle* A few items I purchased before Halloween but were broken items in the store I got for a steal, need some love n' care and will be worked on soon.

Last month the kids and I took a little ride through some old cemeteries in Fairburn. Seen some headstones dated back to the early 1800's! We just got back from Clermont, Florida this weekend and to my surprise there was spanish moss growing naturally on the trees. So much of it! The trees looked so creepy, I immediately took notice. Although I forgot to collect some for home, I would love to recreate the look for my tree out front. Make note.... I'll be back!!!!!

Here's a list of my projects for this year:
Corpsing my Bucky's
Making more of the fence I made last year, so the cemetery completely closed in.
Adding finials to the fence
Creating zombie ground breakers - goal is to make things move this year!
(this list will grow, and exists in my Halloween journal)

I think with a little help from Tim's crazy brain and his expertise in art, shits gonna be awesome this Halloween!!!!

Tombstones!!!

This weekend started off pretty dull... the weather wasn't really great, my broom otherwise known as the 61 Falcon was acting ghoulishly evil. So I pulled out paint and started to touch up my walls, doors and boarders. Also take a shot at that glazing project. Well the touchup paint is NOT the same color as my walls and the glazing/faux project kinda went on a sour note because I just wasn't too crazy about it. It looks great from afar but I'm just not sure I want my entire living room looking like that.

So what does Madame Jen do next? She goes back into the garage to put away the paint cans and finds herself staring at (what I thought was 6 boxes) 8 containers of Halloween decor. I took everything down and went through them all. I forgot that I had got some stuff on clearance last year. I had several masks that will work perfect on those mannequin heads! My big ghoul, Dylan's costume from last year is going to be perfect to put to use on my zombie. Oh and my best witch Mandi was on the phone with me, she says I'm a hoarder because I only found 6 bags of moss left over from last year. *cackles* (note to self, you do not need anymore moss for at least 3 years)

Ok so below (and forgive me for uploading these pictures backwards) are the tombstones. As you can see I started off with several tombstones I got at the Dollar Tree, some moss, plastic bugs, and those sticks I steal from my neighbors lawns that come from Scotts lawn service. I used my glue gun to stick the lawn stick onto the back of my tombstone. Remember if your glue gun is hot temp do not put the hot glue on your styrofoam tombstones! Put the glue on your stick and wait a few seconds then place on tombstone. You might want to apply some pressure to ensure it sticks. Remember the reason I use these sticks is because the sticks that come with the tombstones do not do very good in the wind. These sticks I use are perfect and they do not come out of the ground due to high wind and are strong enough to keep them up.

Next, I just play around with the moss. I always like to put some along the bottom. Therefore you do not really see the end of the tombstone touching your grass. It kind of hides it and makes it realistic looking, great effect! I also like to place some green moss into the nooks and crannies on the tombstone and sometimes along the top/sides. I use green moss for the bottom and occasionally I'll use some spanish moss at the top. Just use your glue gun and place wherever...

Last, but not least plastic bugs.... I use spiders, rats, flies, etc.. I didn't use the purple ones only because they don't look that real. I took a close up of the spider on the one tombstone. With my glue gun I made a web effect around the spider. By doing that I just touched the tip of the glue gun to the points and slowly dragged over the glue "string". No need to pull the trigger. Just bring the gun back and forth and down and touch.

The two tombstones shown at the top were bought on clearance last year. They are about 2x bigger than the Dollar Tree ones, I added some larger spiders and a black crow I purchased at the Dollar Tree to them.

Of course that's not ALL I did this weekend.... there's plenty more where this came from! I worked on some creepy jars, worked on my zombie and played with some skulls. Coming soon....

60 more days till Samhain!

Hunt for Halloween

This past weekend I took the kids on a Halloween Hunt, we basically hit every store in town for Halloween goods. The big stores, like Target and Walmart only have "fall" stuff out. No Halloween goodies but, low and behold Michael's had all their stuff out. We checked out Big Lots and Dollar tree too. Big Lots and the Dollar Tree just started to put their stuff out. So there was little on the shelves.

We picked up some black crows from Michael's because it was 30% off. Michael's had some ok stuff. Not worth buying at the original price though. If you buy something from Michael's they will give you a coupon with your receipt to come back the following week for 40% one regular priced item. Not bad... Or you can even go online, sign up for their newsletter and every week they will email you with basically the same coupon. Sometimes they email you with a 50% off coupon or like Sunday they had a 25% off your entire purchase coupon. Oh and by the way they had a Martha Stewart Halloween collection of craft stuff which was actually pretty nice... we all know Martha is a true goth at heart!

The Dollar Tree simply amazes me. We picked up some cool skeleton heads, more moss, fall leaves, Halloween signs, a bag of plastic bugs, skeleton garland (which was super cool), and the most amazing was the butchered bloody hands and feet. Those things are at least $10 at Spirit or Party City. Oh and picked up some super kewl skeleton plates, bowls & cups - cause that's just good all year round!

Last place we went to was Home Depot, we picked up some cheesecloth which was $2.59 for 4 yards! They sell that at Michael's for at least $6.99, not even as big. We also picked up some wooden stakes to build our fence for the cemetery. The cost on the fence will run us about $34 (which includes fence, posts, nails, and black flat spray paint.) Oh and I picked up some chicken wire, because I started making the body to my zombie. Pictures will soon follow....

On Sunday, we went to this ladies house and picked up mannequin heads. She was selling them for a few bucks a piece so we picked up 6. They kinda look like Trya Banks but we will morph Tyra into a zombie. Pictures to follow...

So word of advice for today is: If you shop at a particular store, go online and sign up! They will email you coupons! Check your local dollar tree store for creepy good finds! Last but not least, do your homework on the smaller stuff like for instance the cheesecloth. Gives a super cool effect to your haunted house/cemetery and adds great ambiance. Buying things at the hardware store is MUCH cheaper, maybe you have to put some of your time into it but, think of the quality time you get to spend with your ghouls at home putting it together.

Happy Hauntings!

Halloween

I know we're still in August but, I guess because I live in Georgia now I can actually sense the season change. I wanted to start a blog about the stuff I'm doing for Halloween and since I've gotten some ideas from some really nice folks who shared their own ideas online. I figured it would only be fair to share some of my own.

Since I've been on my own and out of my parents house, I've always wanted to have a spookiest house on Halloween (besides the spookiness that's inside all year round). I wanted to be just like those Christmas freaks that dress up their houses in lights, reindeer's, and Santa's, but having skeletons, blood, tombstones, coffins, etc.... I recall being a little girl and there was a police officer at the end of my street and he had the scariest shit in his yard. His whole sidewalk was lined up with bloody heads. I guess you can call it a fascination. Any hoot, I've lived in apartments up until I moved to Georgia (3 years ago) where I could finally unleash my fascination. You can only decorate the outside of an apartment so much. At your own house and your own yard you can do what ever the hell you want!!! *evil grin*

So here it begins....

About 2 weeks ago I got on a Halloween kick! Searching on props & decorations online. Some props can be super costly, and some you can just make on your own! My thought on starting this was to give some tips, maybe some people can even share their own tips. Tips on creating, diy, ideas, saving, etc...

For instance, a few years ago I purchased some of those foam tombstones from the dollar store. Well last year I got some moss and plastic spiders and dressed them up a bit. Just by taking a glue gun, a bag of moss from the dollar store and some plastic spiders I had from the past years spider web (which we always throw out when we're done, just keep the spiders it comes with). You can pick up the same bag of moss from the dollar store, they sell it at Michael's or any other craft store for $2.59 and up! One bag of moss will go a long way.

The other thing I did last year was I kinda stole the Scott's Grass notifications off my neighbors lawns. It's just that stupid black stick with a flag (people throw it in the trash anyway). Ok back to the point. You know how those dollar store tombstones never stay in the ground or the metal prongs it comes with to stick in the ground is super flimsy and/or break? Well I took the Scott's Grass sticks and glued them with my glue gun to the back. It works PERFECT! PS: If your using a hot glue gun make sure it's cool, hot glue will burn right through that foam. ;)

Another thing that was pretty cool that the kids discovered was when I was playing with the glue gun and tacking the spiders on the tombstone, the glue made a web "look" as I would take it away and attach. So I actually started playing with the glue gun and made a bunch of spiderwebs at the corner of the tombstones. FYI: They are selling webcasters (freak'n glue guns) for $50 bucks! You can buy a glue gun for several bucks at a craft store or you might have one handy around the house.


So that's it for this discussion. I'll continue with another blog on great Halloween dollar store finds! Finding coupons online, and my prop creations.

Feel free to leave spooktacular comments!