Yep, that whole drug lab/police raid scene has been dismantled for something a little less violent and more ghoulish.
It all started
I built back when The Surgery of 2023 had temporarily reduced my lifting ability down to a handfull of popcorn. A small handfull of popcorn.
After a few years of being tucked away in storage it got drug out a couple weeks ago as the perfect starting point for a Halloween display.
But of course I couldn't just stop there!
So I Amazoned some asorted ghouls, ghosts, and other bits (I already used up a bunch of them before thinking to take this photo),
and with some paint, glue, and glitter spruced a few of them up.
Then I dug around in my Bins-of-Crap and came up with this wire-n-paper tree.
You know how there's two schools of thought about tinsel (yeah, don't ask me how tinsel made it here to Halloween because I have no idea. It just did.), the one-strand-at-a-time (and do it neatly damnit!) sticklers and the just-throw-a-handfull-at-the-damn-tree-and-call-it-done anarchist hippies?
If it would have worked I'd be with the hippies and tossed a couple of handfulls at the damn thing. But it wouldn't, so I ended up painstakingly gluing one strand at a time onto carefully selected branches untill it seemed like enough - or untill I'd had enough - I'm not really sure which it was.
Of course you can't have a Holloween tree (is that even a thing?) without buzzards (that I had to paint myself since they only came in bright-metal)
and a murder of crows.
These came in black, I just had to add some highlights and, even though you can't really see them, red eyes.
Add a base made out of some stacked foam covered with brown wrapping paper, some buzzards and crows hanging around, a few ghosts for ghoulish measure, and you have a Holloween tree! (I don't care if that's not really a thing yet, I'm starting a new tradition damnit!)
Not one to learn from experiance, I then, one persnickety strand at a time, tinseled the hell out of the haunted house and finally pumpkined, ghosted, vultured, crowed, and black-catted the crap out of it.
Things are starting to get outa control here! But that’s never stopped me before - -
OK, I'm not sure how this Christmas truck got in here but it has been commandeered by the resident witch who is taking out civilians with it.
Speaking of buzzard food - I mean eviscerated civilians - - -
And every respectable haunted house has to have a graveyard. After all, there's got to be someplace to put all those unfortunate civilians.
OK, getting closer now. (The penciled rectangle on the bench represents the inside dimensions of the display case.)
But wait!
Poking around online I came across this Haunted Forest canvas-on-frame print, at Walmart of all places.
It's actually a quite effective backdrop in its own right,
but when did that ever stop me from meddling?
I mounted some LEDs face down on an appropriately sized circle of white, open celled foam. This acts as a diffuser, spreading the light out.
Then mounted the foam circle in just the right spot on a backer (actually just a trimmed down file folder), and mounted the backer to the back side of the haunted forest frame.
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| Lights off |
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| Lights on |
And the effect is quite dramatic, even if I do say so myself.
Sleaking of lights, I ended up using a lot of them in this display, my whole supply of 12V LEDs as a matter of fact, to get everything to where we were happy with it, but we think it turned out pretty well. (In my opinion the video at the end gives the best view.)
Now I need to dust off that Victorian house and start thinking about a Christmas display.
Maybe tomorrow - - -
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