When September hit, we locked in our family theme for Halloween, and we decided to go big and decorate our house to go along with it. Our first project: headstones! We scoured the internet for tutorials, got some supplies, and got to work. I designed these headstones/made templates, inspired by Disney's Haunted Mansion ride, printed them off, and the Brian, Michael and I traced them over insulation foam. (Tracing really was poking through the paper to make an indent on the foam.) We really wanted to replicate the headstones that are outside the Haunted Mansion, especially the ones that are tributes to the Imagineers. We borrowed some inscriptions from the Pun Crypt and imitated actual headstones down to text layout and shape.
Once we got the design poked through, we went back over the pokes with a pen.
Brian cut out the headstones with his jig saw
and then Brian, Michael, and I used the Dremmel tool to carve out the inscriptions.
Here are our Imaginneer Haunted Mansion replicas:
Marc Davis was one of Disney's "Nine old Men", the famous original core of animators. After working on 101 Dalmatians, he moved over to Imagineering originated most of the characters and paintings seen in Haunted Mansion, the funny ones in particular.
Yale Gracey was one of the original Imagineers put in charge of the Haunted Mansion attraction. He pioneered the use of projectors to create an animated effect on statues. His most infamous work was the Hatbox Ghost, though he couldn't get it quite working right for the ride, and it was removed shortly after the ride open until the technology evolved enough for it to return in 2015.
We really wanted to do Madame Leota's tombstone which features a head that opens its eyes every so often. We knew we couldn't do the eye opening effect, but we were determined to put a bas relief face on one of the tombstones to replicate it a little bit. We bought a foam head and cut the face off.
And we had a little too much fun playing with the face.
The trick then was to figure out how to fit our foam face with the pattern for the actual headstone (since I'd take the picture of the headstones and enlarge them for most of the imagineer headstones).
It was a little bit tricky.
But Brian finally got it.
We couldn't help noticing other headstones that were on display in other places, like this one at the Butterfly Biosphere.
While the boys were handing the construction of the headstones, I got to work on costumes.
I couldn't find the right fabric for Rachel's skirt, so I decided to draw the pattern myself. It was quite meticulous, and I used up two whole fabric markers to do it, but I think the effect was totally worth it.
Michael originally didn't want to participate in our family theme, but after making headstones, he decided to join us and even made his own costume.
We kept our eye out for props, and considered buying an actual hatchet for my accessory. We ended up going a different direction though.
After looking for damask wrapping paper to decorate our entryway with, I was so excited to find damask vinyl tablecloths at the Dollar Store. I bought them out and used them to create this wallpaper effect. I busted out our floating candles from when we did a Harry Potter party for Michael four years ago, and bought remote controlled LED tea lights to go inside. We found a couple of spooky lenticular prints at Michael's, a cheap black fitted sheet at Walmart to cover our chair and got to work transforming our entryway.
I LOVE how it turned out.
I can't put decorations up before Brian's birthday, but a day or so later, we went to town, and we were all so excited for October and Halloween!!!
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