Halloween Fun Day 6, 7, and 8

Since so many things that I want to work on take prep work or drying time I decided to combine these days. The skull sign and coffin were bare wood constructs that I got at a craft store and then primed and painted. The arm is a lifecast that I am goring up zombie style and will display on a stake in my yard for Halloween. The skull with LED tealight/candle is a progress shot from the one started on Day 5. I am making a top to the skulls where a sculpted candle comes out from with a place for a tea candle.

Halloween Fun Day 5--Skull Prep

Here is some prep work on a project that I will work on for a few days due to materials needing time to cure. I want to retro fit a skull yard stake where the internal solar LED lights have stopped working. The top is open to the elements where the solar panel was located so I will build the top of the skull. Instead of leaving it plain I will make a candle coming out of his head and leave room to put the LED tealight shown into the candle for some lighting effects. For the basic structure to build my candle upon I am using a toilet paper tube and building a shelf near the top to hold the tealight.

Day 4--Hands: Expressive, unique, useful and versatile.

One can use hands to communicate and everyone's hands are shaped a little differently from everyone else's. Take a look they really are different. So useful and versatile that they set us apart from most other mammals. Opposable thumbs help, of course!

With 29 years of lifecasting fun, I have accumulated quite the plaster hand collection. At the Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum Art Department my specialty was creating hands for all sorts of figures. I molded them, cast them and fixed them up--guess you could say I was quite handy. Since then I have also lifecast many hands for clients. Today I decided to dig up some plaster hands and paint them to glow in the dark in order to use in a graveyard scene.

Day 3--Mini pumpkin

Pumpkins are awesome and one of my favorite Halloween icons. Today I finished sculpting this little pumpkin out of Sculpey clay. I wanted to work the facial features into the actual shape of a pumpkin instead of carving it out like a traditional one.  Now I am thinking that it needs some ghoulish friends.

Day 2--Glowing things

Glowing things have always fascinated me. I still stop to chase fireflies on the rare occasion that I encounter them. A couple weeks ago I finally saw my first glow worm. So for today's creative fun I grabbed a formerly created lifecast of legs and feet and embellished it with glow in the dark paint. It is a subtle effect and effective Halloween decor.

Day 1

After spilling the bottle of embossing ink all over the cards, table, floor, and me I finally got it all cleaned up and saved enough of the ink to experiment with the embossing powders a bit. I will be enhancing the store bought Halloween cards/envelopes with embossing powder. The card on the right has an interesting medley of black, white, purple, blue and silver embossing powders added to it.

31 days of Halloween Art Fun

Tis the season for me to go back to my roots of quirky, slightly off, and sometimes downright gruesome art. In high school I became fascinated with Tom Savini's Bizarro Makeup effects book and decided that was the career path that I wanted to follow. Guidance counselors did not understand since I was a straight A student in the academics however my art teachers did and they allowed me to delve into the weird and wacky side of things. Life took me down some interesting job paths at Ripley's Believe It or Not art department and Universal Studio's Halloween Horror nights makeup department but then I veered off into more tame subjects and themes as I tried to be "marketable".

In celebration of Halloween 2013 I am going back to the darker themed art creations--well some of it will just be good ole pumpkin fun and such. Each day I will have fun with some Halloween themed art fun and I will try to dig up some old photographs to post as well.