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5 ft posters

I love finding ways to make props out of free stuff.  This year my big problem with the carnival is filling up dead yard space.  So to fix that I went to my local furniture stores and asked for their boxes.  They were more than happy to let me have as much as I wanted.  These make great "canvases" for some large clown paintings.  Here is how I did it...

Carnevil Entrance

I wanted to make a bold statement this year with our party entrance.  I decided to make a big clown face to attach over the entrance gate.  This clown was inspired by a Funhouse build by Keith Corcoran.  Check him out on YouTube.  It was painted onto two large 4' x 8' pieces of foam board from Lowes.

Dollhouse Roof line

The haunted doll house is coming along slowly.  I have completed the siding on the first floor and part of the second floor.  I had to stop there to complete the roof line.  Here is a picture of the cardboard roof extensions.

Doll House Siding

I am finally finished with the paper mache and it is time to put siding on the house.  I took a ton of Card Stock paper and ran it through a paper shredder to make my siding.  It is actually a little smaller than I would prefer, but it is cheap and will still look really neat.

Building a Haunted Doll House

I was never that into doll houses when I was a kid, but after seeing some of the haunted doll houses people are doing I changed my mind.  I have seen many neat doll houses that were repainted and turned into haunted doll houses.  That is a quick way to go, however, if I really want to get into decorating this thing I need to get the right scale and do it correctly the first time.  I knew I wanted 1:12 scale.  This means one inch in doll land is equal to one foot in the real world.  This is the scale most collectable doll furniture will be in.  Once I started looking for that scale of doll house I realized they were really big bucks.  No problem, I will just make my own.

This is the journey of building my dream haunted doll house:

Columns out of soda boxes

I drink a lot of soda and so I throw away a ton of soda boxes.  I was thinking that I should come up with some way to use them as a prop.  So one day I started playing with them and came up with an idea for entrance columns to our Haunted Hotel. 

Here is how I made them:

Making a Vampire Hunter Kit case

Here is my finished product, however, yours can be any design you like.

Materials:
* Hard suitcase
* paper towels (the expensive cloth-like ones work best)
* craft glue (Elmer's)
* thin  cardboard (I used the cardboard from a 12 pack of soda)
* A print out of your words
* a cup of tea
* 2 shades of paint

Our 2013 Haunt

 The Horror Hotel

The Horror Hotel was built in
1901 by Fredrick Higgins.  He was originally
from California and relocated here to build his
dream hotel is the most remote location possible.

He was a very odd sort of fellow and insisted on
building the Inn upside down.  It consists of 13 floors
with level 13 being at ground level with the remaining
12 floors built underground.  It was said that he
opened his doors to all sorts of unsavory travelers. 
Many of his patrons were thought to be fictional
characters made up by Hollywood movie writers.  He
claimed that those movies were based on real events
and that those “monsters” frequented his hotel.  He also
claimed that his Hollywood friends would often visit the Inn and were inspired to write  even more movies based on the people they met and experiences they had while
visiting here. 

Eventually, some of his more famous patrons moved into the Inn permanently.  They preferred the underground privacy.  It is said that some of those patrons are still dwelling in the Inn today and we still catch Hollywood writers snooping about from time to time.

The Inn has fallen into disrepair since the sudden disappearance of Fredrick Higgins in 1946.  His
descendants were afraid of the ghosts that haunt the Inn and the rumors of what and who may be lurking in those underground hallways.

We do not believe the stories and have decided to open the Inn once again. We are excited to have you for our Grand Re-Opening!

Reaper

Learn how I made this in just a few short minutes.

Moss Statue

Learn how I turned this                                                    



















 into this

Trick or Treat Game

This game is a lot of fun.  Here you draw a card from the bowl (we used a jack-o-lantern) and you must do whatever it says.  Some are treats, where you win a prize, and some are tricks, where you must do whatever the card says.  Here are the printables for this game.

The Winking Killer Game

This is a fun game where one person is the killer and must kill other guests by winking at them.  When a victim is killed s/he must wait a few minutes and then act out the death that they were given on their game card.  If the killer manages to kill everyone without being discovered, they win.  If a living victim correctly guesses the killed, they win. 

Here are the printable cards for this game.

Halloween Pictionary

Here are the printables I made for Halloween Pictionary.  Please feel free to use them if you like.

Planning for 2013

I can't believe it is already June! It is time to put the Halloween planning into full gear to prepare for this coming October.  We know that the haunted hayride will be out for the year so we can put more focus on the haunted house.  Since we left the structure up from last year we are already months ahead.  I am thinking of doing a Dead and Breakfast / Haunted Hotel theme for this year's haunted house.  I know that I want the focal point to be an elevator with multiple scares on different "floors" using the pepper's ghost technique.  I also know that I have to top the closet from last year.  That was our biggest impact scare. Not a single person wanted to go into that  dark space and a few people chose to leave the haunted house all together rather than brave the dark! 

That is as far as I have gotten.  I know I want to do the carnevil party again because we had some great ideas last year that we didn't get to do as we ran out of time. I have some ideas for new group party games that I will share as I finalize the details.