Here’s the first set, a group of Halloween die cuts that came packed together, made by Hallmark, I’d have to guess late 1960′s. Included are 3 witches, a couple Jack o lanterns and of course ghosts and bats!

Printed on the bottom of the insert content sheet is: 100HHD6-4, Hallmark Cards, Inc. Made in USA.

Enjoy!

This is Halloween from The Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack.

I Put a Spell on You by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins.

We were stuck.  We wanted 6 fake pumpkins, something we could carve, that would last a while, that wouldn’t cost a small fortune.  Surprisingly, searching the Internet didn’t return a whole lot.  I found something called Funkins which sold for about $25 a pumpkin.  A PUMPKIN, for fake foam pumpkins!

Even on sale, we were looking at $84 for 6 pumpkins, and that meant 6 pumpkins that all looked the same.

Yeah… no.  Everyone has seen the amazing Stolloween, and I think most have been intimidated to even try.  I know I was, he makes it look so easy!  That said, we really had no choice, so we gave paper mache pumpkins a try.  I’ll spell out how we did it, and I think you’ll agree, it was a spooktacular (Sorry, I couldn’t resist & I’m kind of lame like that) idea.

We used the same paper mache recipe as the last batch of paper mache pumpkins we made last year.  You remember, the vintage ones.  Yeah, those.  We took grocery bags, filled them with crumpled up newspaper, tied them up, and used tape to make “grooves”.   Toilet paper tubes provided the shape for the stems.  Basically, they oughta look like a pumpkin made out of bag and tape at this point.

Now that you have that done, go on and make your paper mache glue and tear newspaper into long strips.  For life sized pumpkins, we went and did 3 layers of the strip, thoroughly letting each layer dry.  This took us about a day, starting in the afternoon.  Get out a box fan to speed things up.

Now you’re going to have to make your paper mache clay.  We used 6 cups of flour, 1 bottle of elmers glue, a cup of liquid starch (1 cup of water + 1/4 cup of corn starch).  Mix that up and add some GreenFiber Natural Fiber Blow-In Insulation.  A huge cube cost us $7.25 from the Home Depot.  Use as much as you want until you get a thickness you like.  Apply clay to just the tops of the pumpkins.  Note where you’re going to cut your eyes, as this stuff is VERY difficult to cut through.  Drying takes a while but we found a heat lamp really helped things along.  We got a tiny bit of sun that helped us out too, but late September in Ohio = little sun.

Onto the the next day.  Now that the tops are dry, cut a circle in the bottom of your pumpkins and yank out the paper guts, and the bag too.  We left our toilet paper tubes in place.

Not much to see now.  Carve your face, cut some thin cardboard to line your cuts with (think of depth for the eyes and mouth) and get some more clay going, and slather it on.  Let them dry more.

The one up front?  He was named “Lampy” shortly after he made Facebook debut.

We painted the insides of the fake pumpkins orange.

And then we painted the outsides flat black, covering everything well.

It all comes together right now.  This is exactly one week from when we started.  Break out some primer and dry brush your surfaces.

That takes about 5 minutes to dry.  Now get artsy!  I dry brushed as to not overkill the entire project.  A little brown, yellow and orange was all I needed.

And some detail, too:

Time consuming? Yes.  There was 2 of us working on 6 pumpkins and it did take us about a week, doing it leisurely some nights.  Worth it?  Definitely.  They look infinitely better than anything store bought and they cost hardly nothing to make.  Now that’s a treat.

A true sign of the approaching holiday came a couple of weeks ago when we found these curbside:

They’re huge and proudly hung on my basement walls.  Early 1990′s stand ups for the win!  I obviously need to strengthen my reputation around here as the Halloween chick, because these were trashed very close to home.

Anyway, I’m really here to write about the creep that showed up around 5:30 pm on Halloween. He had a clipboard and the first thing he said to me (Jen, in costume and camera in hand) was, “Who are you, the paparazzi witch?”

He later went on to tell me he not only belonged to the Euclid Chamber of Commerce (for owning what, he didn’t say) but also that he worked for the Euclid Sun Journal and was doing a piece on us. He said he couldn’t believe we’d never made it into the paper and that his photographer was going to try to make it out, but no guarantees, because there was an accident or something she had to photograph.

He had a friend with him, his name was Ken. I don’t remember creepy guy’s name. Anyway, he hung around, chatted everyone up while Ken stood around kind of staring at his shoes and not having a good time. Somewhere along the way I saw the flash from a camera. This was supposedly his photographer from the Euclid Sun Journal.

Come 8pm, aka time to turn the stragglers away, creepy guy and Ken were long gone. Like they never were. They arrived and left on foot, both times very quickly.

We checked the internet, and we even wasted however much money on a freaking Euclid Sun Journal and GUESS WHAT. Nothing about us.

I searched long after, and even had friends looking, in case I was an idiot who couldn’t read or find pictures of my OWN HALLOWEEN HAUNT… but nothing.

Now I never for a second doubted that creepy guy was from this newspaper, because the Euclid Sun Journal is to journalism as dog shit is to gourmet cuisine.

ANYWAY… I guess creepy doesn’t work for the Euclid Sun Journal (that literary trouser pile) after all. If he does… hey, creepy? Where’s my article? Dipshit.

I half expect creepy and Ken to show up next year, and if they do, I’m gonna be Ninja Witch on their ass.

Here’s the best photos I could get:

Creepy Guy with his Clipboard.

Ken is on the left, creepy guy on the right. Click for a larger version.

Mostly because I don’t want to point to things in an absolute manner that aren’t absolute.

The graveyard might not be to the left next year… you dig? It’s like a mall directory in that respect. If I wanna move The Gap to the other end of the mall, I can do that now. And there won’t be any confused preppy kids ending up not finding The Gap or any gothy/emo Hot Topic bound clutches accidentally entering The Gap.

Anyway, Guy gets the joy of assembling, and he was swell enough to cut the wood for me, and I’m sure I’ll be posting an actual write up in the how-to’s eventually, but just enjoy some pictures in the meantime.

Wood for the Halloween haunt directory @ boo!

Photoshop and scissors. Hardcore.

The Boneyard sign.

A Haunted Carnival? Why not!

Hey, gotta get the name out there somehow.

Guess which way it points.

On any Halloween night, we use at least 15 incandescent lights, a few being the power sucking floods and most being those painted, 25 watt party lights.

Every year, we seem to lose a party light.  It’s really the one thing we can depend on year after year.  A colored light bulb is going to burn out. These lights are tested and used for 2 hours a year. Those that do seem to last have cracked and faded color.

Anyway, I shopped around and we ended up purchasing about $60 worth of LED light bulbs from http://www.dealextreme.com/.  For that much, we got:

01474  DX Multicolor 18-LED Light Bulb 110V x 6
01476  DX White 36-LED Light Bulb 110V x 3
05116  18-LED E27 Light Bulb 110V Green x 3
05136  18-LED E27 Light Bulb 110V Red x 3

So 15 bulbs for $60 actually comes out to a pretty good deal when you consider what a party light will cost.  (If you want all kinds of comparisons, including cost and color performance, please see my entry here:  LED or Incandescent? A Hands-On Comparison).  The E27 base is a typical base found in the US and fits in our outdoor plastic light stake fixtures just fine.

With this being my first year with these and all, we’ll see how they perform and hold up to the cold, and sometimes wet Euclid, Ohio halloweens.  We are super pleased with the color, especially the green.  Considering these are LED spotlights, not floodlights, the light throw is fantastic.

And the color changers are just so cool.  We’re going to use 1 or 2 on our aluminum christmas tree to make up for lack of a color wheel.  Pretty neat, huh?

Here’s a video of these bulbs in action uploaded by npdcrazypyro on youtube:

I also want to note that we ordered these on September 10th and received them October 6th.  Deal Extreme was very forthcoming with information and informed us early on that shipping would be delayed due to quality control checks.  They were actually shipped from Hong Kong on September 26th and tracking information was made available.  One light had cracks in the plastic but all 15 functioned just fine out of their boxes.

This year, the Halloween haunt is going in the backyard, and our 3′ garden fence is only long enough to wrap around the front of the cemetery.  This left the whole edge of the yard exposed.

We quick started pricing PVC, figuring we’d make a fence out of that, like so many other haunters have.  It always looks really great, but we don’t really have the time nor the cash to buy all the supplies, paint the PVC, etc.

So I thought, and thought some more, when it finally came to me:  Plastic chain!

We have a couple of pallets in the garage.  We’re gonna pull them apart and place wooden ‘poles’ in the ground every (however many) feet.  From there, we’ll either attach or run chain through them with a little swag on the links.  Think of a chain and concrete pole type deal near a lake or something.  Or just look at the picture here on the left.

The more I thought about it, the more I really liked the idea.  So I went on the hunt for plastic chain.

Well, turns out, it’s actually harder to find than you’d think.  I checked lowes and home depot and neither had much.  That’s when I stumbled across http://www.mrchain.com/.

I looked around and sure enough, they had chain.  I was a bit nervous to order from them as I’d never heard of them before.  They’ve got chains in every size and color you can think of.  We were almost prepared to buy about 50′ at $.60 a foot when I noticed a “close out” link.

I FOUND PLASTIC CHAIN, 2″, FOR $.15 A FOOT!!

Mind you I was still nervous about ordering from some place I’d never heard of, and I wasn’t sure this chain was by the foot and blah blah blah.  Oh, and it also has no photo, so the color “gold” was left to our imagination.  We joked that it could be anything from kindergarten yellow to super shiny bling.

We placed the order.  They processed and shipped it all in the same day.  It arrived via UPS super fast (from Michigan to where we are in Ohio) and the color is PERFECT!

Click to blow up the image.  It’s like an aged bronze color.  The invoice calls it “Old Gold”, and I’m tickled pink.  60′ of chain cost us $15.50 out the door, shipping and all.

This is a closeout, though, so if you want some, might wanna jump on it now.  Here’s where you can find it:  http://mrchain.com/-close-outs/2-gold-chain-discontinued.

ETA 6/14/2010: Here’s a shot of the chain in action!  Click it, gets heap big.

Real Vintage Paper Mache

Click any image to view larger

I love those vintage pumpkin lanterns that go for like $50 on eBay.  If I had billions of dollars and thousands of square feet, I’d probably already own all of them like some weird collector that aims to have the last existing whatever.

Lucky for the rest of the world I have neither.  But I do have newspaper, water and flour.

So Guy and I made our own paper mache lanterns, and I gotta tell ya, they were fun and pretty easy to do!

We made 3 small and one large.  We ended up making the glue like 4 times, but it’s not a big deal.  If you wanna do this, I’ll break down the supplies we used.

* Newspaper, ripped into strips about 6″ – 12″ long
* Assorted balloons from the dollar store
* 2 cups hot water
* 2 cups cold water
* 1/2 cup flour
* 3 tablespoons sugar
* White tissue paper

Heat the 2 cups hot water to boiling.  Meanwhile, mix 1/2 cup flour into 2 cups cold water.  When hot water reaches boiling, mix your cold water/flour mixture into it.  Bring this all back to a boil.  When it’s done, add in your 3 tablespoons sugar.  Mix, wait for it to cool, and enjoy.

paper mache strips

We learned not to “pre-soak” your strips because it pretty much dissolves into unusable snot.  Dip a strip in, wring out the excess glue with your fingers, and slap it down on your balloon.

We placed ours on wax paper with a phone book pressing down so they had a flat top and bottom.  We stuck them in front of a fan.  They dry pretty quick, the top/bottom taking longer, of course.  We ended up putting 2 layers down when I realized I should have rubber banded either the balloon or the covered ballooon while it was wet to make a pumpkin shape.  I slapped some extra on there, and it looked ok.

The general rule is to really let these things dry.  We made these over the course of a few days.  It was fun to get dirty time and time again.  Really!

Next: Pop the balloon, pull it out.

Carving was fun.  We modeled a couple after the vintage lanterns we found on the internet and a couple we just cut typical jack o lantern faces into.

I looked all over the place trying to find the right thing to paint it with.  I was totally paranoid that we’d screw them up and have a pile of sad goo.

We ended up going with colorful latex house paint we had laying around in the basement.  2 light coats (think unsaturated) and you’re in business.

Mix some water with your paint for an aged effect for both the green base and to fill in areas that would naturally have shadows.

We finished by drawing the eyes and mouth on tissue paper, cutting them to size and taping them in.