24 Oct 08 Halloween - Make Halloween Coffins For Fun

Coffins are associated with the dead and feature in scary movies old and new. So, they make for great Halloween props to complete your holiday decorating scheme. There are many ways to do that and they’re all easy to carry out. Here are two simple-to-make options.

Miniature Coffins

As tiny props around the candy bowl, hung on the front door frame or sitting in a window sill, coffins only six inches long makes a great decoration. They can be filled with flowers, candy or dolls to complete the picture.

They’re also super easy to make. Just use your favorite drawing program on the computer and make the classic coffin shape. This is the ‘toe pincher’ style in which the overall shape narrows at the bottom and top, with a wider section in the middle.

Use the software to help you get the angles right (slightly larger than 90 degrees at the base and top, about 150 degrees at the ‘elbow’ section). The sides, foot and head section are rectangles.

Then just print out the results on stiff, black cardstock, using bright lines for the outline of the pieces. Cut out the shapes and use ice cream sticks or toothpicks with a little household glue to put the coffin together.

Full-sized Coffins

For a life-size prop the effort is a little greater, but the plans are basically the same. Acquire a few slats of plywood for the base, top, sides, foot and head sections. With careful planning three 4′ x 8′ pieces of plywood will be plenty.

Here, a protractor can help you get the angles right. Or, you can use large sheets of plain wrapping paper or blank newsprint to make a template. You could draw lines directly onto the plywood, using a protractor and tape measure. Or, you can make an outline of the piece on these large sheets of paper then tape them onto the wood.

Then, just use a standard power saw to cut out the pieces you need. A handsaw would do, but that’s a lot of work for eight sections. To assemble the result into a safe, sturdy prop L-braces and hinges are the easiest way to go.

With a power screwdriver/drill you can attach L-braces to the base in a few minutes. Then attach the foot, head and sides by using screws to connect those parts to the base. Now all you have to do is attach the lid or top.

Standard, kitchen cabinet hinges work best. Screw four of them along one side on the inside of the coffin, near the top. The hinge center should protrude just above the rim of the side piece. Then flip the hinge ‘open’. Get someone to hold the lid above the ground or benchtop and insert screws into the lid through the hinge flange.

Paint the coffin black using standard black primer. Spray paint would work, but that method takes a long time and a lot of paint.

Go to your favorite Halloween site and decorate your coffin with a skeleton, or a stuffed dummy, blow-up doll, or whatever ghoulish figure you can dream up!

24 Oct 08 Halloween - Lighting Your Halloween House

If you’re ever been on a Hollywood soundstage or seen a backstage documentary of the making of a horror film, you know that the key to those gory effects is effective lighting. Seen in the clear light of day, gory gunshot wounds, scary monsters and forbidding caves all look pretty silly. With proper lighting, they become horrifying.

Fortunately, you don’t have to have millions of dollars worth of special lights or be a director of photography to light your Halloween scene. Just follow some of these special tips from the pros…

Paradoxically, one of the major factors to effective lighting is not light at all, but the shadows cast by lit objects. It’s those deep, high contrast shadows that turn a pastoral daylight graveyard into a frightening nighttime cemetery. So, to get the same effect for your front yard cemetery scene, front porch or the areas around your bushes do what the pros do.

Aim your lights at steep angles. That creates very long shadows. It’s what we can’t see that really counts. Also, don’t use too many lights. One or two is plenty to cover a wide area. You want to cover, not reveal.

Continue that ‘theme’ by keeping the wattage low on all lights. That hides detail and adds to the air of mystery. When we can only see dimly, we imagine all kinds of things, especially when there are the right kinds of props and decorations to help our fears along.

Light from unusual angles. Your face looks normal when illuminated from above and to the side. It creates shadows beside the nose, beneath the eyebrows and under the jaw that we don’t even notice consciously. But reverse the direction of the light, come from below, and suddenly you have a scary look. It creates shadows we do notice, and it makes us uncomfortable.

The same principle applies when you’re lighting your home or a Halloween horror house. We can see objects, but they appear strange. Things don’t look like we’re used to and that is unsettling.

Anytime the eyes and brain can’t perform their normal function efficiently - picking out and identifying objects in the environment - we feel threatened. That’s because we know that under those circumstances we can’t deal very well with what might pop out. That creates a sense of foreboding. And that is just right for creating the mood in a Halloween scene.

Changing colors helps, too. Normal daylight is white with a yellow tinge. Change it to a deep blue, a harsh red, or that purple that comes from blacklight and again you have changed the normal environment. That helps create the sense that things are new and, in dim light, hard to anticipate.

Achieving that effect is easy. Use blacklights or red bulbs. Put colored gels (plastic filters) over a white bulb. Drape blue cloth in front of a fixture. Just make sure to keep all plastic or cloth far enough away to eliminate any fire hazard.

Change the way things look with shadows, dim light and colors and you can inexpensively light your Halloween scene the Hollywood way. You’ll be a big hit with the fans.

24 Oct 08 Halloween - How To Build a Front Yard Halloween Graveyard

Halloween - How To Build a Front Yard Halloween Graveyard

One of the keenest decorations you can make at Halloween is a front-yard graveyard scene. It can really be the centerpiece of your spooky, fun efforts to evoke the holiday. Here are a few suggestions about how to create that ghoulish display…

First, a few words about what you do not want to do. Halloween is a busy time, so you don’t want to spend your entire holiday building an elaborate scene in front of your house. Remember, unlike Christmas, it will only last a couple of days. Keeping it simple and easy to erect is the way to go.

One of the easiest ways to build the whole scene from scratch is to get a series of gray cardboard slats. They can be purchased from a stationary supply site, or in the form of a pre-made Graveyard Scene in the decorations section of a Halloween site.

They assemble in a few minutes, either with clips or a little bit of household glue, sort of like a 3-D jigsaw puzzle, only much simpler. Then they’re fitted with something to help them stand up. That can be as elementary as a bent coat hanger, or a few short, thin wooden stakes that glue to the back.

Put a few up in the front yard and you are already half way toward having a complete graveyard scene for Halloween. But as they stand, so to speak, they are only half of the total picture. Creating the other half is almost as easy.

The gravestones can be decorated in several ways using ordinary household items. A can of glow-in-the-dark spray paint is an excellent way to put funny names or phrases onto the headstones. Cobweb mesh or spray is another atmosphere-generating decoration that is super easy to add.

Now, for the element that will really make your Halloween graveyard scene shine, literally and figuratively: lights.

In order to give the decoration that Hollywood finish, emulate what the pros in Tinseltown do. Create lots of deep shadows around the headstones, alternated by spotlights at the right places.

That can be done in a jiffy by placing some ordinary lawn lights on the backside of select gravestones. The solar-powered type works best, since there is no need to run any wires around the yard that the kids can trip over. Just drive the stake into the ground behind the display and you’re done. Don’t overdo the number, though. One light will serve well for up to three or four headstones.

To supplement the scene, a few atmospheric lights on the roof can give the perfect accents. Keep everything at a low wattage and pointed indirectly to create those long, spooky shadows. A single one on the porch near the front door can serve double duty, lighting the doorway and spilling some illumination out into the yard.

To give it the final touch, if you live in a climate where you have access to them, lots of big leaves can really help. Leaves help create a scene of quiet suspense. You can even spill some off the roof every once in a while to give a cooperative actor in a skeleton suit a fright for the happy trick-or-treaters.

Enjoy!

24 Oct 08 Halloween - Halloween Pumpkin Design Ideas

The creativity of graphic designers has blossomed, producing an endless array of pumpkin carving stencils for Halloween. Stencils actually combine two great values in one. They’re an ultra-easy way to scratch an outline on the pumpkin face with an icepick, which can be carved with ease later. Or, you can use a black marker and just limit yourself to the drawing if you’re in a hurry.

The design options available are unlimited.

Long gone is the simple Jack o’Lantern that used to be the sole pumpkin carving style. Or, more accurately, it isn’t gone but has been joined by a thousand new ones to make the holiday even more fun.

Cats are a big percentage of the total. That’s not surprising since black cats play such a prominent role in Halloween mythology. You can find everything from the friendly, smiling kitty to the evil, grinning demon-in-animal-form among the choices. Go beyond the cat-face, though and carve a complete animal so you can include the tail. That long slit in the pumpkin makes for a great lighting effect.

Pirates are another popular design. Why pirates should be associated with Halloween isn’t clear. Maybe that’s because it’s such a common costume, or people just think they look evil. But whatever the reason, they offer an outstanding series of shapes that are easy to make. When you add a pipe to the final face design, it adds an interesting asymmetry that makes your pumpkin a little different.

Batman designs are popular this year, thanks to the hit movie. But bats have long been associated with Halloween, so the theme fits right in. Rather than just do one, go wild and carve a dozen little ones all around the surface. When you light the interior, it splashes yellow-orange light in every direction. Very cool.

You can include lots of non-traditional elements to make your Halloween pumpkin carving design unique.

Old Mummy movies (and the latest one, too) make ancient Egypt a part of Halloween myth. They always include ghouls, zombies, tombs, black cats and the like so the mixture works well. Take advantage of that and carve a Pharaoh’s head on your pumpkin. The headdress provides a geometric pattern that makes the lantern cast shadows that add to your home decorations.

You can create some truly gross designs like having a smaller pumpkin in the mouth of a larger one, getting eaten. Big fun. Go one step further and carve your pumpkin to look like a Great White shark’s mouth and have it swallowing three people. If only the legs show out of the pumpkin mouth, you’ve got a hit. See how weird you can be on Halloween and get away with it?

24 Oct 08 Halloween - Essential Halloween Props

Halloween has become a great festival, filled with fun ghoulish decorations and silly costumes. You can add to the fun and complete the look with a range of holiday-themed props.

Decoration Props

Decoration props sit, hang or otherwise remain stationary. They can decorate inside or outside the home.

Standard round gravestones make for a great prop to use for a front yard cemetery. But even cooler are the centuries-old Saxon Cross tombstones that really add a sense of style. Anything that evokes a time long gone by fits right in with Halloween, which had its origins in the Middle Ages.

A fog maker is another excellent addition to the toolkit, both for cemetery scenes and near the front door. They can run for several hours and create just the right atmosphere for a spooky Halloween scene.

Don’t forget the bats, either. What would Halloween be without lots of scary bats? Evoking vampires, dark caves and things that grab your hair in the night, they’re the perfect prop to add to your holiday fun.

Costume Props

You might need a prop not so much for decoration but to complete a costume. Plenty of choices there.

One is a simple skeleton’s arm that pokes out above the back of your collar. Sew it to an undershirt and let the hand grab the back of your neck. Add to the effect with a little stage blood and you’ve got a great looking prop.

Fake hands are a staple of Halloween props, just as they are in horror movies. Sprinkle a little stage blood on the end and let it sit on your shoulder. Sit one on a table to guard your drink. Creep out your date by dangling it above her head as she adjusts her costume in the mirror. Use your macabre imagination, you’ll find a dozen uses for these props.

Your character this year might be Leatherface, Jason, or Freddy Kruger, two favorites of many Halloween partygoers. A prop chainsaw, machete or those scary razor hands are essential to complete the look. What would those ghouls be without their slicing tools?

Animatronics

‘Animatronics’ used to refer to robotic animals used in films, at Disneyland and elsewhere. Now it means any prop that moves. And there are plenty.

An animated gargoyle is the perfect prop for the front door. He comes alive right when the trick-or-treaters reach to knock on the door. Or, put one in the window and let some sound effects complete the ghoulish display.

Coffin lids that open by themselves are always great fun at Halloween. Add a bloody hand that crawls out from the crack and you’ve got a holiday hit. Put a leaping spider or flying bats inside and no one will want any candy after that.

Complete your Halloween fun with the right props for decorating and costume completion and get the most fun possible out of this spooky holiday.