Thread: Xmas Items turned Halloween

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Since Christmas items can sometimes be used for Halloween with a little tweaking (and usually at a lower price), I thought it might be helpful to start a thread to alert haunters to these items. It can also help us get a jump on props or accessories we'll need later in the year.


1) Two things I saw in this week's ad (Walgreens) were Wireless LED Candles (by Bright Star) and a 6-pack of battery operated LED flickering tea lights. The candles are on sale this week (11/23/08-11/29/08) for a dollar off BTW. The tea lights seem to be a regular price, but still a good deal. I've bought the wireless candles before and they work great in my halloween candelbra. They are 9 inches tall and come with a base but you can put them into your own base also. The ad says they can last 50 days on one set of batteries and while I didn't test that out they do seem to have a long battery life. They stay on for 8 hours and then turn off for 16 so if you have them in your display they will turn themselves off and on automatically, saving you the time of going around and doing so each night. While they are white, I don't see any reason you couldn't paint the candles black with the appropriate plastic paint.

The other item in the ad was the 6-pack of battery operated tea lights. The lights flicker. These are the type of tea lights that you see people on the forum using to make the stick candles using PVC pipe, expanding foam (like Great Stuff) and hot glue for the dripping wax effect. I've bought some of these already and they look nice.

You can go to the Walgreens site to check this week's ad and see the pictures of the items--page 14.


2) Another Christmas item that can be useful are Christmas tree stands to for your standing props when you don't have a stand for them. Just add a pole and attach. Maybe you already have some that can do double duty for both holidays. If not, I saw ones for $9 at Walmart, and rotating ones can be found if you check the various sites (like ABC Distributing/150 & 350 degree rotation/AC wired). I've seen some that are AC wired and rotate 360 degrees also but more expensive (I think I saw one at Kmart recently). Certainly Christmas and after-Christmas sales on these items would be great.


3) You can use Christmas Tree FX boxes for creating lightning and flickering house lights. Check out ABC Distributing or LTD Commodities. These are probably seasonal items in their catalog so will disappear after Christmas most likely.


Anyone see any Christmas motion activated props that can be cannibalized?

I like the idea of christmas tree stands for supporting props

Just to add to this thread, don't forget to be on the look out for spotlight holders, extension leads, etc.

Last year after xmas, I bought a multi outlet outdoor extension with timer for 75% off, a 50ft outdoor extension cord for $4.50 and spotlight holders (the ones that stake into the ground) for $1.50 each

THis is what I will be looking for in sales after xmas

This is a great thread, I just got home from work but on the way I stopped at walgreens and bought 2 of those yard stake spotlight holders and 1 green spotlight- on sale atm for 3.99. (says its energy efficient hehe so I bought it even though Ive seen tons of these everywhere. )

There was some nifty candles that flicker you can placed along pathways, 3 large candles with nice rubbery "flame" with the flicker light inside- 9.99 buy one get half off. Seeing as they had only 3 boxes left I grabbed a set. You can connect up to 3 strings if you wanted for a total of 9 lights. I thought these would be good for my over the door ghoul, he can hold these but that idea is still needing to be tested. Those large doorway ghouls Ive seen for $70 so when I saw those huge ghouls walgreens had at 75% off I bought 2. (/kicks herself for not grabbing the other 2- they were 7.5 each. )

I saw all the individual candles but they seemed to not be flickering and worse the light seemed bright white or the "flame" part a hint of a flame shape so I passed on 'em. Ill look again to see if another store has the flicering tea lights as mentioned. Also, I am looking for any new style of led lights, wish they had red but only blue and white were at walgreens.

Not really a halloweeny thing but I bought 2 boxes of 70 count pink string lights with pink wireing/plug ect. Ive never seen anything like them before and I cant pass up pink stuff :3

I'm always on the lookout for cheap animated wire frame reindeers.
I've always wanted to make a wolf out of one, also just the motors themselves are useful.
Christmas is also a good time to find the wireless remote controlled power plugs for animating props.

Originally Posted by DaveintheGrave

I'm always on the lookout for cheap animated wire frame reindeers.
I've always wanted to make a wolf out of one, also just the motors themselves are useful.
Christmas is also a good time to find the wireless remote controlled power plugs for animating props.

Last year I got a few at Home Depot's 75% off sale on New Year's day.

A neighbor dropped off a werewolf mask he found on sale the other day and thought I could use it...so I was thinking the same thing about the deer/wolf when I was ops checking my reindeer the other night.

from another thread i was looking at - i will be picking up some cheap xmas wreaths & turning them into halloween ones there's a lot you can do with a can of black spray paint & a hot glue gun

I too, love to walk through any store and look at every thing and think “How can I mutate this!”

I like the idea of making a xmas reindeer into a wolf. I found this while screwing around on the web this morning:

Animated Deer Motor

I haven't ordered one yet but I'm planning to. It should be good enough for small animations. They have one that comes with the cam arm, too.

Ah, many thanks for the reindeer motor link. Was going to be searching for one, eventually. Got an idea to use those for a spider victim...(or 20)

Ondeko......Awesome...Thanks