The Bone Polisher (by Fox G)

 This week I had a special guest helping in the shop. My nephew Fox came to visit, and wanted to make his very own animatronic creepy prop.
In Fox's words:

"It just was a stupid bear from my grandma, and it wasn't even Christmas when I got it. I had no use for it so I gave it to my Uncle Dave. He didn't use it, so when I got there we decided to take it apart...and look what we found inside! A baby stomach!!!
When we got all of the fur off, his arms were made of wire, his legs made of metal, and his head is a plastic rectangular circle. So we were thinking on what we could make him into.

We found this black skull, and set it on the plastic part.

 I liked the way it looked, but it was not scary enough so we put eyes in it. But the eyes had too much gap in it, so we put clay around it. As we waited for it to dry, we thought of what the clothes should be. So we started to put on clothes, but when we put on the clothes we saw the baby pinkness of the stomach. We spray painted it black and put black cloth on it. Then we put bones on its arms and spray painted them black. Then the eyes dried and then we got all the clothes on. So we put it on, and put a hood for it. And we put decorations. We had a bone and a brush.

This is how he turned out. When we plug him in, we made it so he will brush his bone and turn his head side to side. I decided that since he is now a monster, I had to make a story for him of how he turned to a monster.
and his story is....
He was an old bone polisher and there was a car wreck in front of his shop, and when the car hit the window, it splashed shiny paint. When he screamed, the black paint went in his mouth, coloring all his bones totally black. And that is how he turned into who he is now.

This is my creation by Fox."

I think Fox did a great job with his new monster. He is very proud of it, and plans on keeping it in his camper to scare everyone.

And the winners are.....

The oracles at Random.org have spoken. The winners in my "Dog Days of Summer" contest are :

1. Padrat86 has won the skull
2. Cindy L Collins has won the pumpkin character head
3. Beauregard Strange has won the Bottled creature

Please contact me via email  theshadowfarm (at) gmail.com to claim your prize.

Thanks to everyone who entered for sharing your thoughts on Halloween. It was my great pleasure to read your comments and has served as inspiration to reignite my creativity.

Lantern Silhouettes

 Here's a project that is very easy and has alot of kick to it. Yesterday I was experimenting with some ink stamps and decided to try stamping the glass panels in a small lantern. As you can see, it worked really well!

• Remove the glass panels from the lantern
• Choose an appropriate ink stamp. You could use any design so let your imagination go wild.
• Using a permanent ink, stamp the glass on the frosted side. If your lantern has clear glass, I'm not sure how well this would work since the frosted glass gives the ink a rough surface to stick to.
• Let the ink dry completely
• Re-install the glass panels with the frosted side facing inward.
• Light it up and enjoy!

For an additional spooky effect, I would suggest painting the lantern with a faux rust effect. I'll talk more about that later.....

Dog Days of Summer Giveaway

July is nearly upon us, which means it is time to get busy building new Halloween props! In order to get everyone thinking spooky thoughts, I'm running a quick contest and will be giving away the three handmade items pictured on the right. 

here's how to enter:

Simply follow this Blog if you aren't already, and then leave a comment right here in this post telling me something you like about Halloween.  It's just that easy!

This contest will run until July 7th, with three winners announced on July 8th. Winners will be chosen at random using the highly scientific 'name out of a hat' method.