Monday, August 13, 2012

The Three Terrors

I am a pro at getting my foot rather securely wedged within my masticator whenever I get an idea.

This can be doubly dangerous when people want something done for free.

The latest challenge is for that Halloween dance thing I allude, construed, and shampooed to. More specifically our club has very little money but they need trophies for the costume section of the costume dance.

So why not make the trophies using all that prop building stuff we want our club to be famous for.

One weekend later and tada! Best Female. Best Male. And Best Terror from beyond the Dark Underworld (or most creative, I forget).
After the break I'll show just how I made these three baddies (PS I have not finished the bases. I swear they won't look like paint splattered messes).

 I began with the wood, sawing that into fancy base sizes, sanding it down and nailing a dowel to it.

The heads were a bit tricky. We own a 1 and 1/8th" bit but well plastic and spinning metal do not mix well so I finished off the holes with a combo attack of hot wire and snap blade. And all without losing any fingers!
The heads were all securely hot glued into their positions of however I felt like putting them up.

For the heads I wanted eyeballs, and what better way than clay, polymer clay. I just rolled some balls, stuffed them into the eyesockets to see if they'd fit, popped them in the oven and painted.
I started with the Witch first. I found an old set of fake blue eyelashes hidden in some drawer full of Halloween stuff (there are about 50 of those drawers in my house so it's always an interesting treasure hunt) so I figured I'd give her some bright blue eyes to match.

Again I used a rather simple dip paper towel in latex that I cut with a lot of water and then place on the skull method:
I like to have the latex really thin because it absorbs paint really well. Speaking of paint. Next step was covering the head in just that. I began with a watery black base. Which is a fancy way of saying, put paint on brush, dip in water a few times, rub all over head:
To that I added a green layer and a few touchups here and there including those cursed eyelashes!
Got a small hat from that creepy doll section at Hobby Lobby and wrapped the base with black ribbon and Best Female Costume trophy:
The Pirate didn't completely start out as a pirate, which is probably why you'll notice he has two eyes instead of one. Oops.

Again I did latex and paper towels but I wanted to try something a bit different so I decided to see what batting would do.
I covered the head in random places with the fine fuzz and really globbed it on for facial hair. It makes rubbing the head kind of fun, like betting a balding chia pet.
To paint him I used brown as a base and then went back over with a tan to lighten stuff up. The beard I tried a whole butt load of paint colors each I was more unhappy with after the last before finally settling on grey with white streaks.

An eyepatch, gold teeth and some ribbon later and Best Male Costume is done.
For the most creative I wanted to go crazy, so I found some old horns again kicking around in one of those drawers and glued them to the skull then I got to latexing:
For mr demon I went against my own grain and painted him red first:
Then I went black, then red, then some brown, then black spots:
To finish him up I added an eyeball I made a bit different from the others. To have it danging I used butcher twine, carefully frayed and glued to the end and all painted red.
I've still got to finish the Best Couple, which will be very different from those three heads. Oh yeah and paint all the bases.

But otherwise, whatcha think of the trophies? Would they be worth wearing a costume for?

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