Thread: Grimmy

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Here is the reaper, affectionately nicknamed Grimmy, that I built for this years graveyard. Over sized skull from Party City ($20), skeleton hands from Party City ($20), 10 yards of burlap dyed black then washed out to grey it out from Jo Ann fabrics($2.99 a yard before the 40% off coupon), 6 yards of cheesecloth from Jo Ann fabric dyed black then washed to grey it out ($6), lantern from Spirit store ($15) and scythe fro Party City ($9), I need a better scythe but this is the best I could source locally. The body shell is a PVC stick figure with chicken wire wrapped around it to give it mass.

The hands were a costume hand with no palm so I hot glued fabric across the palms then covered it in dipping latex after putting wire into each finger to make them articulated. I then used some min wax stain to age it as it was a stark white and didn't go with the skull at all. After that I stuffed them with cotton batting , stuffed in a short PVC pipe section to attach it to the arm then latexed it closed.

The skull was left pretty much alone except for spraying black spray paint into the eye sockets and nose socket as they were a dark brown and I didn't like that look. This is what started it all, it was over sized and I knew I had to have it to build a big reaper around. All the store reapers were to small and pathetic looking for my taste and to expensive to boot for their size. The only huge one I saw was at Party City and it looked like crap for which they wanted $200 for. It was the biggest skull I had run across that looked real good.

next year I plan to add wings to give him the true angel of death look. Everyone was blown away by him and his size, my neighbor down the street who is into Halloween also kept saying "I've got to do one of those next year" over and over. I am 6'2" tall and you can see from the pictures even with me stretching my hand high I still don't quite reach the top of him. I didn't measure him but he has to be over 8 feet.

wow!!How are you keeping him up?He looks great.

a pvc frame behind him attached to his pvc frame which was slipped over some 4 foot rebar pounded into the ground and then a few guide wires. held up ok under the off and on breeze but I think next year I am going to remake the frame out of metal pipe as the pvc frame swayed to and fro a bit much for my liking (though it did kind of add a cool movement to him).

He is huge. that is one tall prop dude.