In this special Halloween update I'm sharing some of the stuff I made for the occasion. I had a bit of a skull theme going this year. It started when picked up a number of cheap skulls from some trappers at the KC renfaire and I using them for a couple projects for Halloween. First off the Halloween wreath:
It's basically just a grapevine wreath, a few artificial flowers, and a few small skulls held together with wire and hot glue. The jaws of many of the skulls were free moving so I hot glued most of the jaws in place at their base to keep them together. It might need some additional garnish (I'm thinking snakes... yeah snakes), but it looks fairly creepy so far. I really like the deer skull centerpiece.
Next we have my attempt at a new tradition in addition to the Halloween wreath, the Halloween tree:
It's basically just a fallen limb with holes drilled in it and pose-able black stems from Hobby Lobby stuck in and the bases of those stems reinforced with floral wire with a little moss thrown in. It's all stuffed in a small metal barrel we had around the space. Of course after it was assembled and posed I threw some more skulls on it for decorations:
I like the asymmetry of the whole thing. The twisted and gnarled limbs really give it some character. Hopefully I can find a place to stow the thing over the next year so I can make some nice creepy ornaments for it when I pull it out again.
Lastly, since there was already casting stuff being used in the Hammerspace monster maker classes and I needed a welding mask, I threw this together:
On the right is a failed cast, from which I learned that Alumilite, at least in reasonable volume, is not good of slush casting as it sets up almost instantaneously. The base design was done by my friend :
From there I blended the design a bit with a coyote skull. Here's a pick of the sculpt in progress:
It's meant to incorporate a pair of welding goggles and have space for a respirator so I can wear it while watching the plasma cutter work. Here's the latex mold with plaster jacket after the clay's been removed and a couple pours have been done (thanks to Dave at for helping me make the mold and do the pour):
I originally had the goggles in the sculpt but I messed the threads up on the first pour so I cut them out on the second pour and glued an extra set I had in place:
Here's a pick of the test fit (cast in Smooth-Cast 320) before painting:
Here's some pics with the respirator in place after Brandon Mohn airbrushed it up:
I threw this on together in a couple days so there's a few things that need to be fixed so I'll probably get another pull off the current mold and keep it around for when I actually want to fix it up. The goggle components actually threaded into place with the first pour so I'm optimistic about incorporating goggles into future sculpts. For now I'll probably just add a second elastic band a bit higher up from the goggles to help keep it from sliding down my face when not using a respirator, but other than that it's pretty usable in it's current condition.
