Since I usually can't wait to finish stuff before I'm eager to post pictures, this will be the place to find pictures of what I'm currently working on.

 

Here are some of the projects we've got brewing right now.

Gustaf has been hard at work recently on a few projects I can't really show pics of, but here are some pics of the other things that he's been creating!

What you can't really see in this pic above is that all the knobs and buttons have different words like "Destruction, Mayhem, More Mayhem" etc. And the upper buttons on the organ all look like finger bones. That's not super clear in the pic. It's pretty great! We got this organ at the second hand store for 200 SEK, which is like about $25 or something and that included them delivering it to our house! It used to be a really ugly brown thing that was totally messed up. Now, it's an old pipe organ! Hehehehe

He's also been using some of the old frames we've bought from second hand stores to create these old portraits from images he's collected on the web. They will be perfect for hanging in a haunted mansion! We're also going to be making them so the eyes will follow you as you walk.

I have mostly been working on creating walls that will make the place look like a manor. I found this pattern in a picture online, and I enlarged it and then spent about 9 hours cutting out a stencil for it. My hand was swollen and killing me for like two days after that. lol :) This is not a final image, just so you know. I've also got styrofoam molding that I'll be putting over the line between the wall paper part and the dark part, to give it more of a wall effect.

So, if you've been watching this space you saw the original just sculpted version of the Screaming Face I've been working on. I've just finished painting it, so I thought rather than adding to the bottom of this page, I'd just update the photo to show what it currently looks like. :)

Here's an update on how the walls are starting to look with the portraits hung, and the eyes made so they will follow you!

And here is what the downstairs walls look like right now.

And here is what the walls that don't have trim in these pictures will look like when they're done!

I'm not so thrilled with the way that the upstairs walls are turing out, but it's too far into the season to turn back now. Heh. I actually made both the stencils for the walls myself, but the upstairs walls took a lot longer to make because the pattern I modified had a lot of areas that wouldn't really work for making a stencil. I had to cut both stencils out myself with an exacto knife which my hand my never recover from. lol

Here are pictures of the stencils:

When I made this stencil, I don't really know what I thought it would turn out to look like on the walls, but I wanted something different from the downstairs pattern. I also had a really hard time deciding which colors I wanted to do upstairs. I wanted to go with a faded gray-green, and then have a darker gray-green on top of it as the pattern. I thought the colors I picked out at the paint store would work, but they seem to have turned out a bit more minty green than gray-green, in my opinion. It's too late to change it now, of course, but ah well, it'll work well enough for this year. We'll probably paint over all the wall panels next year anyway. Here's a pic of what the upstairs walls are looking like right now.

I worked today on the Giant Eye for our front upstairs window, as well as the boards that cross the window. Unfortunately, it's pretty dark out there right now, so the only way to take a pic of it is with a flash, which really kinda ruins the illusion. But, this is what it looks like:

The eye does actually follow you as you walk by the house, which is the whole point of it. :) Unfortunately, the video didn't come out so great because it's so dark and all I had was my little digital camera. So, the video is jumpy and loses some of the effect because you can't really see the boards or anything, but you can see a video of the one that inspired mine here: http://davelowe.blogspot.com/2008/10/08-halloween-31-make-watching-monster.html

Ok, I've taken a somewhat better video of my Giant Eye so you can see it in action:

Ok, I've got finally got one of the dropper props working for my haunt! Sheesh, it took forever, but it's working well enough to put a video of it up now.

Unfortunately, when I upload that video to youtube, you can't see the face of the creature any more for some reason, so here is a pic of what it looks like: