site info – Page 3 – An Unorthodox Halloween

Odds and ends.

Catching up on some of the excitements that’s been going on here.

Couple new items I don’t fully know what I’m going to do with:

First, are the rose cages from my parents.

I can see them eventually becoming stone pillars, totem poles, obelisks, ‘witches’, an arched entrance, a gate, and lord only knows what else I may come up with.

Second is this partition I found at the swap meet.

From Halloween buildup '08

Really have no idea on this one. It was just so pretty and exotic, I couldn’t just leave it there.

Next, some have wondered where I get all these bamboo poles.

Well, last year, I used some gift cards obtained from work to purchase them individually from Home Depot. And, yes, they were pricey, and wouldn’t have happened were it not for the gift cards.

HOWEVER. The Bamboo Fencer is the solution. Their fencing, individual poles, and all other Bamboo accessories prove to be cheaper than anywhere else I can find locally, or on the net. Even factoring in shipping. Where Home Depot had the poles for $1.20 ea, I’m spending less than $0.50 ea on the new ones from Bamboo Fencer.

Finally, I had to remove the Nightmare Before Christmas widget. I noticed this morning it had changed and was doing a strobe-like animation flipping between christmas and halloween decoration. Strobe effects are not used in my haunt, neither will they be on the site.

Coming together.

Bought some more rigid wrap last night. There’s now enough for 6 “tombstones”. Time to figure out just how many graves we can actually make.

Normal graveyards on halloween, it’s perfectly good to throw out just the tombstones. For these, however, no one is going to associate an overturned pot on a stick with a grave marker without the mound to make that connection.

Chicken wire, cloth, and joint compound, possibly turned into monster mud, will be the tools used to make the graves. I just need to see how much chicken wire I have left, and how many graves we can get out of it. But, more on that later, for we have a few surprises in mind for the grave mounds, to give them that special Halloween menace.

I also went back to Guild Wars and took a tour of some of the more prominent locations for these graves to get more reference photos. A very special thanks to the folks of the Last Platoon Alliance for pointing out prospective locations.

I went here on a hunch. The place was named “cemetery” after all. Only 3 lonely graves, however.

The rest here were located in a beautiful canyon, pointed out to me by Boid Ronseyder of the Last Platoon, in a place I had never been before.

A shelter and some offerings.

The 3 ‘tombstone’ designs represented.

In some site news, I have been getting some requests to make all the links pop in new windows. This post has thus been enabled. However, looking over blogger, it’s not immediately possible to edit the HTML in the links on my sidebars, so I’ll have to rebuild them as an HTML piece, deleted the templates, then add the HTML code back in. That’s going to take some time as I’m not all that quick with the HTML quite yet.

It’s that time again.

Michaels has all their halloween stuff out. Back are the witches bottles, which are rather cute. And the assorted hand crafted signs. And, of course, all that spooky town stuff.

But, Michaels doesn’t stop there, they bring in some decent Gemmy props as well. If those are your thing. Plus all the lighted lawn ornaments and things.

*sigh*

JoAnn’s seems to be focusing on the cutesy market this year. Nicely ornate pumpkins and cute little smiling “scarecrows”.

Meanwhile, Hobby Lobby has a full Christmas section up and running already.

On one hand, I love to see all the Halloween stuff start flowing into the stores. On the other, I can’t recall when the last time I saw something I actually wanted to purchase was. It all is either too silly, costs way too much, or I can build better on my own.

Ah well.

In some site info, I’ve split the links between shopping and other stuff, and added some good descriptions of what you can expect on the other side of the links.

Where have you been?

Go away a few days, and folks start asking “what happened to ya?”

Well, see, all this Halloween all the time stuff comes at a cost. And, to keep the boss happy, seems I have to make a little offering of remodeling the entire upstairs.

But, you can see more about that over at the boss’s place.

One thing I do enjoy about construction work is the quite time to think. (cause swinging hammers is quiet time and all, right?) And, in between some coats of paint this evening, I actually had a whole hour to sit down and wait.

With summer TV suckage, I popped in The Lion King.

Man, is this thing a great film. Halloween inspiration all over the place.

Great ideas for use of fog, lighting, and assorted other possible projects.

Why, those dancing skeletal shadows should be possible with a proper scrim, even…

And, responding to a request, I’ve managed to slow down the slideshows on the side there. Too slow? Still too fast? Let me know.

There once was a pinata…

Well, the pinata distraction is over.

The Power Grab Paper Mache worked well, it seems. No reinforcement tricks to the pinata (bamboo, duct tape, etc) needed. Only 7 layers thick at the end, much thinner than the previous 2 I made of traditional glue recipes. And yet, stronger, still.

I’ll have to get a few photos of it’s carcass up as well. But, I understand it survived 32 kids whacking it with a stick and a good drop when the rope it was hanging from broke before finally being put to death by an adult wielding a baseball bat.

Yeah, I think it will be strong enough to make a few halloween decorations that wont be the target of baseball bats, just fine.

A little swap meet find, here.

While slightly damaged, and obviously aged, the horns are tremendous. I’m debating just what to do with this thing, use it as is? Try to mold it? But, similar quality goat skulls go for $65 or more from Skulls Unlimited. And, the person selling it wanted $20. I got it for $10 after offering $5, and pointing out all the aforementioned damages and aging.

On one hand, it’s a bit strange just how much I’ve come to understand about skulls, able to identify a wide range, knowing this particular goat was suffering some pathology I cannot pronounce, let alone spell, but I know what I’m seeing. On the other, knowing your stuff makes it easier to barter with people.

Crystal Skull 2 is out of it’s mold, and 90% done. It’s hollow, and I had a mind to leave it so, but it’s not catching the light quite right due to that hollow center, so I’ll fill in the center soon and get pics of it up. Wonderful mold, that one. Really like the look in crystal.

So…plans for the weekend…(no work Friday, yay!)

Name the new kitten. (VLAD THE IMPALER!!!)

Jen was on board with it till people at work had no clue what or who Vlad the Impaler was. Come on, folks…DRACULA. HOW do you NOT know DRACULA!?

I actually put forward the name in jest. Along with Frankenstein and Jeckyl (since one of the 2 vets at the place we go is Dr Hyde…)

Getting Cozette to not kill the new kitten…Bumping some skull production and maybe a little Shrunken Head action as well.

On some site news.

I’ve added a link to the Rock Bottom Cemetery in the links section.

I don’t link to many places, but Blinky kicks ass! This is THE place to go to get the lindberg skull featured in the mold making, plaster skull, and crystal skull how-to’s. There is also a lot of other interesting stuff for sale there.

Speaking of the how-to’s, I’ve also added the howto for the Crystal Skull over there, and rearranged the sidebar a bit. It was time to get rid of that Indiana Jones widget, but I accidentally removed my countdown at the same time…gotta remember how I did that…