Frog on the Pumpkin

...and we're gonna get..... no life during the summer. :) (We are almost done with the Chapel, in fact, if all goes well, most of it goes up tonight. But I have not been documenting it here.  So I am going to retrospectively show you through the chapel build.) After a few years of planning, we finally decided to sell the abbey and build a chapel. The plan is that this will be easier to put together than the abbey has been.  The abbey took an entire weekend, a scissor lift and an army of people to set up.  This new chapel should go up in a few hours. This is the SketchUp plan. Front view from SketchUP Here is the real chapel that we modeled it after. Ardgowan Chapel in Scotland Yeah, we decided to phone it in this year :D

I needed to make a prop to mud at a local  Northwest Haunters Association  monster mud class that I would be attending the following week. So out of the blue came this idea.  How about a praying skeleton prop. Let me start by saying this is not our best work and I really did throw this together at the last minute.  When I make it again, I will pay a lot more attention to detail and NOT use that crappy skeleton! Started by making a pedestal base out of scrap foam.  It is a simple four-sided column with the top cut at an angle and a piece placed on top.  This will accommodate a skeleton kneeling in prayer. Next, I took a skeleton I had laying around from Halloween closeouts that was intended as a door prize for our annual Halloween Party. I then bent and posed him the best I could (never using this type of skeleton in a prop again!) I used gaffer tape to hold him in place on the pedestal. ...

Never saw the first one (as you would have guessed) so I am definitely not seeing this remake.  I am getting faint just thinking about it. You could not pay me enough to be on that movie set.  Nope. Aracnaphobia II  I have to go hide under my desk for a while and think of puppies and kittens :D

before you start cutting. Here are pictures of the (almost) complete shipment of foam for the chapel build.  We have labeled all the pieces and cut them to length this weekend.  The tools from Hot Wire Foam Factory arrive later this week and we can start making the more complicated cuts. What an adventure this is going to be.  Keep posted for updates as we build.

the chapel. The abbey is loaded in the truck and on its way to Oklahoma City. Took us several hours to play this epic game of trailer abbey parts Tetris.  But we got it to fit in 14 feet of the truck (he has to pay to ship by the foot, we originally thought 17 feet, but we just that good.) It is very weird to think that that Abbey will never be up in our yard again.  But the new owner is over the moon to have it, so that makes it bittersweet. Even Hal, short for Halloween Cat, looks sad.  I made my cat sad, that makes me a bad human. Don't worry Hal, we have a new prop for you to climb on and scratch in a few months.

I also sighted this guy in my garden take-over.  Apparently, the original Bucky skeleton has a much better resistance to our Pacific Northwest weather, he has been there for 8 years now. Remember this guy from years ago.  He is still in the garden, and he is going to get some plantings to keep him company in a few days.

About 12 years ago we went to our first HAuNTcon.  This was way before we were involved as much as we are now :)   It was 2006 and we took lots of classes, learned so much and met so many people that are now our haunt family.  One of those people is Mike Krausert (Tattoo, then with Bad Boys Scenic Design).  We took their foam texturing class and ran with it.  That year we made two major (at least for us at the time) projects The first was our new mausoleum. Our first large foam facade was made possible by the skills we learned in that class. This facade is long gone, we were sad to see it go.  But we went on to build the abbey. Now this facade is sold and will be on its way to Oklahoma next week. Stay with me, I have a point. :)  When we put it for sale I got a message from Mike asking why we d...