SKELETON ANIMATRONIC

Working on a new Halloween animatronic.

SCALLYWAG

:::click images to see more detail:::

I finished up the pirate costume last night. When I finished the initial sewing the other day I decided it looked to pristine. Pirates aren't clean looking. So I decided to distress the fabric and make it look a little old. I was kind of nervous about messing it up, but it turned out pretty good. I didn't go crazy with rips and tears because I don't want it to fall apart. I used sandpaper, acrylic paint and dusted it with a little black spray paint.

Once I added all the "extras" the costume really came to life. The sword, though it looks like metal, is in fact plastic.

"extras": pistol, sword, leather belt, long black scarf, coin pouch, and 3 necklaces. I will also be wearing a red scarf around me head and earring.

FLINTSTOCK PISTOLS

I bought three of these plastic flintstock pirate pistols as props for our Halloween costumes. They were SUPER ugly and cheap looking. Plus they had the orange caps on the front of them. Don't tell anyone, I ripped those off.

I paid $3.99 for each gun. I decided to repaint them. I figured they couldn't look any worse.

I managed to get most of the gun apart. It has tiny little screws holding most of it together. What I couldn't get apart I taped off with blue painters tape. I just used brown, gold and black spray paint. Nothing fancy. It was whatever I had in the garage. I think they were each a different brand. I also used a little bit of black shoe polish and a black sharpie to get into some of those grooves.

Doesn't it look AWESOME!! It almost looks real. I sprayed a bit more black spray paint at the end of the barrel. Figured it would be more black from the firing and gunpowdery smoke.

The gold turned out great. Really looks like brass.

I was at our local Renaissance Festival this weekend and saw a vendor selling replica weaponry. They happened to have some Flintstock pistols. The cheapest was $45. Now I REALLY like my $3.99 ones.

ARRRR!!!!!

The Halloween costume making is in full swing. This year we are all going as pirates.

This is Simplicity pattern 3677. I tea stained the fabric for the shirt. Kind of hard to see that in the picture. My next job is to distress the material so that it looks old. I'll post those pics when I finish that.

HALLOWEEN 2010

Here are a few pics just after we finished setting up. Yes, we set up and take it all down the same day. A lot of the hand made stuff just wouldn't make it if left up for a period of time. Plus this way we're not having to repair stuff every year which can be time consuming. I think it has more impact when it's only up for a day. The kids go crazy!!
Not a lot changed this year.

We had a few floating items this year. We attached fishing line from the house to a tree and then suspended this pumpkin ghost guy and a bat that we purchased this year. I'm thinking a grouping of white floaty ghosts would be cool next year.




Found two of these awesome mummy heads with light up eyes. They are made a styrafoam and are very light weight.










Found some much bigger limbs for the scarecrow this year. He looks better.

See ya next year!

MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU

Spent last night carving our Darth Vader pumpkin to go along with our costume theme this year.

A FEW COSTUMES

So due to a hectic schedule, me being sick for a while and Chris' costume taking WAY to long to finish, we weren't able to make anything new this year for the yard. We have bought a few items that we'll be adding. I'll post pics of those.
So here's a few of our costumes this year. My daughter is spoiled and officially had three costumes this week. Her costume for Halloween is an Ewok. I'll be Princess Leia and Chris is a Stormtrooper.

Costume for neighborhood Halloween party.

Costume for school party.

Official Halloween costume.