The flats I mentioned above will be painted as best I can to look like a real building, but obviously, when TOT's walk up, things become much too two dimensional. To combat that, I will add a few elements to help bring depth to the facade - some 1/2inch foam around the windows to look like wood frames, an actual lantern at the entry way sticking out from the wall, etc. Using flats is probably the best method, for me, because afterward, the storage is super easy - five flats at just about 5inches thick each means I only need a little over 2 feet of storage (by 4 feet high and 8 feet long of course). So, any elements I put on the facade (lanterns, etc) need to either be minimal thickness or completely detachable - I could use help with this!!

Some props I've started so far:

Crates. Crates are going to be my bread and butter of quarantining off pathways while still being a great fitting prop. I took regular cardboard boxes (some stitched together to be longer), cut out some 1/2 inch foam into 3 inch wide panels, and hot glued them to the cardboard for a 3-D crate (also taken from SoCalHalloween).

The start of the boxes. I used a wood carving tool and a thin tip to create grooves, aging, chips, and depressions in the foam. (Note: The bottom left box looks disproportional because it was a 'test box' where I used 4" 'panels.' They didn't look right so every crate thereafter was used with 3"). The foam was bought at Lowes in a package of 6 sheets (13"x48"x1/2) - I couldn't get a large sheet of the DOW blue foam home that day).


A little closer look at the detail.


I have since started painting them, but do not have photos. I will take some tomorrow.

My next project was the ever popular growing flicker PVC candles. I first saw these from jimmyzdc's post here. Excellent work and a great inspiration!

I however, am cheap and lazy. I didn't want to buy a can of Great Stuff (I know, only $6, but hey, every bit counts), and I didn't have a drill bit that size. I ALSO haven't seen anyone cut their PVC candles at an angle. I can never get candles to burn without having higher sides than others, so I cut my PVC at a few different angles (15, 30, 45, 10 degrees, etc) - shown here:



In order to keep the flicker light from falling through, I just took my glue gun and shoved it in the PVC pipe. I twisted the pipe around as I let the glue come out which created a small, but efficient ring that acts as a shelf - shown here:


The flicker lights sat in perfectly and were sunk down enough to not be seen (the shell of the light that is). From there I followed the same steps - superglue to make wax.

Here are the candles with the finished 'wax' and the lights inside them. This was before they were painted (all painted white now):


I did experiment with different color spraypaint - beige and silver. Neither looked good!

I'm not entirely sure where these candles will go, but I'd like to make a sort of 'center piece' for a table that will be up on the porch. Wax dripping all over the place - that sort of thing.

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