Halloween is fast approaching. Today we tried to make as much headway
as possible on the most visible part of our haunt - the Graveyard.
| I had done some work on a gravestone
a month ago and just never got
back to working on it. Becky and I decided that it needed to be
finished, so we went to work painting all of the blue foam insulation
with grey exterior latex paint. I rolled the back with a foam roller
and Becky painted in all of the areas that the roller couldn't get to. |
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| I was not all that happy with the depth of the design that was eaten
into the foam during the first round of painting, so we tried to avoid
painting the black areas so I could try painting them again and melting
a little more relief into the gravestone. It took quite a bit longer
than I had thought it would to paint the design with the latex paint.
Avoiding the black areas required a steady hand and a lot of patience.
Oh, and the second coat of latex "just in case" made it take even longer
<grin>.
|
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| Once we had it painted with latex, I used a stiff brush and removed
most of the black paint. I wanted to reveal the blue foam
insulation underneath so that the new coat of spray paint could melt
away more of the foam. The latex paint protected the areas that I
wanted to remain smooth (for the most part anyway) and ate away the rest
of the foam. I applied several coats and melted the foam to a
depth of about 1/2 inch or so. There was a bit of damage to
the latex painted area - I think the paint melted under the latex paint
a bit... |
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| When everything was dry, I went back and painted the entire thing
grey again. It went a lot faster since I didn't have to be careful
where I painted this time. I just rolled it on with a foam paint
roller and let the paint get on the rough recessed areas too. I
left a lot of black paint behind when painting the recesses. Last step
was to age the gravestone by adding some dark washes. I started at
the top and worked my way down with darker and darker washes to
the base of the gravestone. |
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| We did a little decorating around the yard with some cornstalks and
pumpkins. Not scary, but I thought that it would add a bit more to the
decorations...
We all like lots of carved pumpkins, so just before Halloween they'll
all get faces and lights to bring them to life.
I hope that this warm weather doesn't rot them all before we get a
chance to carve them up. |
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| The graveyard fence went up quickly despite the fact that I only
bought 12 sections of rebar to stake the whole thing in place. I
could have sworn that only a couple of years ago rebar was dirt cheep -
now it's $1.00 per 18" section... Sheesh. The gravestones and new
buried coffin prop went inside the fence along with some spot lights and
a bit of dirt. |
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| We piled a little dirt on the base of the coffin prop. We plan
to make some graves, but I would prefer to use leaves instead of dirt
for the mounds. Our trees have not dropped all that many leaves
yet. The weather has been unusually warm for this time of year.
Believe it or not, I may have to go and get some leaves from our friends
house if our trees don't start dropping them soon <laughing>. |
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Tomorrow we're going to try to tackle getting the electrical and air lines
routed to the graveyard so that I can hook up the buried coffin. From now
until Halloween it will be hooked up to a motion sensor so that anyone walking
up the driveway will activate the door on the coffin. On Halloween night,
the guests at our party will have the remote control for the prop and can take
turns scaring the kids...
