Going to the Chapel

...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 call this one penitent

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.

In order to have him stay attached I used gaffers taped to make a dam around the joints so that I can fill them with A-B/two-part expanding foam to hold it in place.

In order to keep his legs straight, I had to use an extra piece of foam that still had a covering on it to prop the legs straight while I poured the foam.

 Then husband helped me Dremel out the overflowing foam.

Leaving just enough to hold the skeleton to the foam base.

I used a little on his fingers to hold them in a praying position.

 To keep the skeleton upright (the bending legs caused it to fall over) husband cut me some metal rods and I used a little gorilla glue to glue them.  We used the holes that were already in the skeleton to place the rods.

Then I decided he needed a book.  So I took a small piece of thin 1 1/2 scrap foam and glued it to a piece of 2-inch foam to create the bones of the book.

Then I marked out the areas on the foam that I wanted to remove. 

I used a Hot Wire Foam Factory tool to shape it accordingly.  Then I hand sanded it out to shape.  

I fit it on the prop to see how it would look.

 I used some gorilla glue and sandbag to glue it down in place.

Then I fitted the sheet over it to get it ready for the upcoming monster mud class.

You can watch how the class went in this great video from Northwest Haunters Association. 

Thanks to Becky Newman for hosting the class and to everyone in the association who made this event happen.

I will post finished pictures when it is painted and ready to go.  This prop is for sale, let me know if you want one.  $150 - I can make more of them if you want to custom order.

NFW! Not ever, no way, no how.

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

You must label your foam

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.

Now we really do have to 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.

Speaking of bones

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.

Sometimes you never know where a path will take you

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 did not contact him to buy it?  I was like, what?  You could so make something better than that.  He called the abbey a 'work of art'.

Our mentor just called one of our creations a work of art. I would not in my wildest dreams have thought that back in 2006 we would be in in a place where our mentor say that to us.  Just can't believe it.  What a long and very fun journey this has been.  This is why the DG Crew have been longtime supporters of HAuNTcon, who has been a long time supporter of Home Haunters learning and taking it to the next level.  See you all in January!