I have been asked to post my Halloween blowmold repaints out here ~ I didn't know how well received blowmolds would be. LOL Even if you don't usually like using blowmolds, perhaps you have some random old candles or some other blowmold laying around your garage, that you might think about repurposing and using.
I've been decorating with blowmolds for around ten years now. Halloween is my favorite holiday to decorate for, and there obviously are far more blowmolds that were made for Christmas than for Halloween. A few years back, I had quite a few old, beat-up, scratched-up Christmas molds and I thought I'd see if I could make something to add to my Halloween display. That started a three year repurposing adventure ~ I'll start at the beginning, and just follow in somewhat a chronological fashion.
So to begin, I got some advice from other blowmolders who had experience stripping and repainting molds, got together the supplies, and gave it a go. Oh my! It's harder than you think (at first). You need a lot of patience and a gentle touch on that spray can. LOL The first things I tackled were a few candycanes and a couple of lollypops similar to the first picture here (those pictured are not the ones I used ~ the ones I used were in deplorable shape). As you follow this thread, hopefully you will see that my technique got a little better over the course of the three years. LOL
At first I used anything extra I had around ~ candles, candycanes. Using blue painters tape and Krylon Fusion for Plastic spray paints. I knew an ebay seller who had a lot of unpainted molds (like the tree) which had damage and were not selling on ebay. I got them for a few dollars a piece and I had a vision to fill my front yard with Halloween candy. I used classic Halloween colors and made it up as I went along. I have no idea what I'm doing... LOL Just having a good time. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it failed.
I was really liking experimenting with the technique. Lots of drips and mess those first repaints. Candycanes are actually kinda tricky to tape off! I thought they were gonna be a breeze. You can see I used any Halloween favorite thing as color inspiration ~ candycorn, witches stockings, the movie Beetlejuice, and even the tree-eating snake from Nightmare Before Christmas.
I was really liking experimenting with the technique. Lots of drips and mess those first repaints. Candycanes are actually kinda tricky to tape off! I thought they were gonna be a breeze. You can see I used any Halloween favorite thing as color inspiration ~ candycorn, witches stockings, the movie Beetlejuice, and even the tree-eating snake from Nightmare Before Christmas.
So I was addicted to converting Christmas molds to Halloween use. Only I had used up all the scuzzy candy canes. I started eyeing up some good Christmas molds... but just couldn't do it. LOL I looked around for what there was an abundance of for sale, that were really really cheap, to fill out the front yard display. At the time, sellers were sitting on TONS of these green lollypops. So we found a seller within driving distance who sold us boxes of them dirt cheap, and I amused myself an entire summer painting lollypops.
These were the first designs ~ swirls, twirls, JOL faces... (boy some of them were bad) LOL It was all just whimsical, and I was having fun.
Here's another candycorn swirl design. Ohhh... and m&m's ~ I made a lot of m&m lollies that year.
Here's all that Christmas candy turned Halloween in our display.
I don't have a good system ~ It's all trial and error. This is a picture of my fancy paint shop. LOL The second picture is a bunch of the lollies I made that first summer. I painted a lot of them and traded them with other decorators to add new things to my display. I guess I could call it the Lollypop Summer.
i don't have a good system ~ it's all trial and error. This is a picture of my fancy paint shop. Lol the second picture is a bunch of the lollies i made that first summer. I painted a lot of them and traded them with other decorators to add new things to my display. I guess i could call it the lollypop summer.
Then someone dropped off a Candle Santa they had found out by the garbage (similar to the one pictured). The red was so scratched up and it needed to be repainted, but the face was still perfect. Hmmmmmm.... What could it be for Halloween? LOL
A wizard?
I did quite a few of these wizards, and in different colors.
Another blowmold that was quite plentiful a few years ago was the Christmas Sitting Bears. At first the sellers I knew, only wanted a couple dollars for a used bear, and as a matter of fact, once I started painting these for Halloween, I was given quite a few of them. Now, as with all the Union molds, they have become a little pricey on ebay.
Here were my first four Trick-or-Treating Bears.
There is HildyBear, DracuBear, MummyBear and FrankieBear.
Then a seller asked me if I wanted some unpainted gingerbread kids to paint for Christmas. (Unpainted molds don't sell very well.) Sure ~ I'll take them!
Added some Halloween color to the icing and gave them some treat buckets ~ I'm not sure these are my most convincing conversions... but I think they make a cute addition to the Hansel and Gretel type candyland theme.
After I did the MummyBear, I wondered how a cartoon-like mummy face would look on a lollypop.
Then I had to paint Oogie Boogie silhouette on one...
I'm a huge fan of Nightmare Before Christmas... so I had to do an interpretation of Jack ~ and then Sally ~ and Barrel too!
Here they all are in the display.
I think that brings me to the end of the first year of repaints. The lolly stash was gone. As you can see, I was trying to add to my Halloween display and recycle shabby, scratched-up blowmolds and give them a new life. Also if I could find those molds the sellers were eager to get rid of for a steal, I would jump on them. What blowmolds I use, has changed each year, depending on what I can find really cheap.
So the next Spring I started painting a few things again. I had repurposed some Christmas candy canes the previous year and my initial thought had been that they would look like witch's stockings ~ perhaps place them on the ground by the foundation of my house, like the house had fallen on a witch. LOL Nope, that was (as the kids say) a FAIL! So I stripped just the top off them and added a snake face. Eh... not great, but funny looking enough. (You cannot see at this angle, but they have two big white fangs in the front of the mouth.)
After seeing my crazy orange Halloween tree conversions, another blowmolder made her own verison of the orange tree ~ but she made the ornaments look like eyes! I loved that idea. So then I used the eyes idea, and I repurposed another pair of trees to look like some sort of cemetary statues. (Mine are below.) They stand as creepy sentries at the entrance to our graveyard. Then I saw yet another version someone made where the garland had teeny legs like centipedes and that the ornaments were eyes AND spiders! Awesome!
We got so many positive comments from visitors about the four Trick-or-Treat Bears I had painted, that we decided a bunch of them out front of the narrow strip on the other side of the front walk would be a cute little theme. We found as many faded and shabby ole bears as we could, and I began to make a bunch of classic Halloween costumed bears. I would have liked to have more of the white bears, but the brown ones are far more plentiful.
Here are the CowboyBear, Native AmericanBear, FirefighterBear and HoboBear.
I guess you could definitely call 2010 the Summer of the Bear. I finally ran out of bears, and display room. Although, I still have a ton of ideas for more ~ there are endless possibilities for these little cuties. Here's a picture of my version of the build-a-bear paintshop that summer. LOL
Here are a few that I made for a trade. An orange version of the Witch Bear with a darling little cape. (Union had made an orange plastic bear, but is hard to find.) A FrankieBear with one of the bears with a molded bow. Two IndianBears and another DracuBear.
~ and here are all those Trick-or-Treat Bears on Treat Street in our Halloween Display. TOTs love to sit down amongst them and have their pictures taken.
At some point, my blowmold collecting friends started to tease me about the bears and was I ever going to paint anything else again. Someone threw down the challenge that I could not change the List Santa which has to be the most common Christmas blowmold to find (the paint on the face was terrible). He told me I would never be able to repurpose it to Halloween, put it into one of my scenes and make it believable. I couldn't use props or add a costume ~ I could only modify it with paint.
I took the dare and ... please meet the Undertaker of Sleepy Hollow Graveyard! hahahahahahahaha I know ~ not totally believable, but really funny!
Here is the Undertaker in the scene. I don't use him any more, but it was a funny challenge.
I also used a free Christmas elf that needed to be repainted, and made a little Gravedigger.
Next I wondered if I could do something Halloween with the Mrs. Claus blowmold. (This is our Christmas mold for example.) For my first repurposed Mrs. C., I went fairly obvious. I converted her to a Witch, using the Witch from the Wizard of Oz as my inspiration. I wish I had gone a tad lighter on the green and heavier on the black. It's all experimentation.
I got excited when I saw that she did indeed repurpose very well. No one guessed she was originally a Christmas blowmold. I wish you could see what bad condition these molds were before I repainted them. That is part of the thrill ~ bringing them back to life! The next conversions were another Mrs. Claus and a Christmas Elf. I keep the original faces whenever possible.
I wanted to make a 'good witch' for the Candyland scene. This is our Candycorn Witch and why not? I made her a Candycorn Elf.
I just had two more classic Halloween female roles I wanted to try out that summer. I had friends who were so curious at what I would do, they were searching yard sales and flea markets for Mrs. Claus for me. Sometimes, the ideas work out better than I expect ~ sometimes not so much. LOL
Here is my version of a Mummy. It will work much better when we finally build her a sarcophagus!!
My beloved Bride of Frankenstein got married and started a family. haha
Just a few more repurposes that summer. I repainted alot of red Christmas candles that can be found at yard sales and even kicked to the curb. I painted them a satin black, and the flames orange. What a wonderful addition to any Halloween display. I also made a few pumpkin posts from candles or posts that had missing or broken flames. Paint the candles black, and screw on pumpkin or skull pails on the top.
My favorite pair I made were from some posts that had no tops that a seller gave me for free. I painted stripes on the post. Then screwed on some 50 cent yard sale find pumpkin candy pails onto them. Covered the hole on the top of the pumpkin bucket with a $2 witches hat stuffed with bubble wrap.
Last Spring, I did a few more lollypops. I added a Mayor and a Zero to my NBC lollies. I don't trace any of the designs. All but the Zero are just my interpretation of the characters. This Zero, however, is copied freehand from a window decal I have on my Jeep. I wanted Zero to appear to fly over the other NBC character lollies, so we cut off the stick/base and put it up over the others on a black 1x2.
After seeing how cute Zero was without the stick/base, I made two more spider inspired lollies, and removed the bases. We put them up onto the house decor.
The story of the spider on the web is cute. I made a new, more delicate, web on a lollypop. Our three year old was playing with it and he got his rubber spider and put in on the web. BAM! I snatched up my cordless drill and screwed it in place. He's brilliant ~ looks great! LOL
Here is where two ideas collide. I made a 'skeleton' face lolly, which was inspired by the face on a plastic Halloween party favor my son brought home from school. However, I just didn't like it. I also had always wanted to make one of those pvc pipe skeletons. You know the ones where they usually use a recycled milk jug or clorox bottle for the head? I combined the Skelly face lollypop with the pvc skeleton frame.
~ Dressed him up a little, and please meet Sir Lollyton Skellypop. Visitors to our display, loved sitting on the bench for a photo op with him. Although ~ I think he needs a bride for next year!
EDIT: I did make him a bride, and they lived happily ever after.
You can create some really unique new pieces for your display from blowmold items that are missing parts. For example, the pumpkin posts I posted earlier in this thread. Another example of recycling blowmolds heading for the trash are the little Eye Posts flanking the bench in the previous post. I had some black and red Empire/GF lamp posts given to me, as the lamp tops had been lost or broken. I found acrylic globes at Home Depot with 4 inch fitters. Painted an eyeball design on them. Now I have some cute little lampposts to put in the display.
I got this Christmas Elf for $5 and he was a mess! Well then I had to strip him and try to make something for Halloween. I really have no idea what I am doing... making it up as I go along and enjoying myself. I wrote a list of everything I thought a zombie should have and I tried to incorporate it into his paint. Originally he was going to have a big exposed brain... but I found out that painting brains is harder than it sounds! LOL So you can just peek at the brains through the slash marks on the Freddy Krueger inspired hat.
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