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Our (commercial) haunt had an interesting night last night:

http://www.kgw.com/news/Haunted-house-sends-Vancouver-mom-into-labor-176629011.html

I guess that means we're doing something right!

Sometime in the last few months Michaels Crafts stores started carrying a more complete line of air brush stuff from Badger Air-Brush Co.

As Michaels is apt to do, the price is "above retail" on...

Hi Terra, did you happen to try the hot knife with any of your glue test pieces? Supposedly the HWFF stuff is compatible, but I'm curious how the others (and the Glidden in particular) get along...

I've had good luck preventing pucking/delamination of cardboard by just spraying it with clear acrylic sealer or painting it with epoxy resin. Prevents it from collapsing under wet plaster bandages...

Very nice, Terra! I'd been wondering what those foam rasps were called since seeing them on Monster Man-- I can finally buy one now... Thanks! :)

Have you seen Monster Man by chance? They used...

I couldn't figure out why the tutorial was getting so many views today, but not this original thread... Then someone on Facebook told me-- turns out my Youtube video showed up on Gizmodo and MAKE!...

Thanks for the compliments, everyone! Always fun to see people react to your creations. :)

I just posted part three of the build log/tutorial:...

Part 3:

Next up is creating the LED lighting and Laser Vortex effect. There's various ways to create a laser vortex. The simple/cheap type is to just mount a small mirror on the end of a motor...

Just a quick update, I put up part 2 of the build/tutorial in the tutorial...

Part 2:

I wanted to use the third (and final) 1" thick piece of foam as a removable (if need be) back 'cover' to the prop and LCD panel. The front three pieces are already glued together (3/4",...

Hahah... Good eye! Yeah, this time of year it's primary use is "Halloween prop holder-upper". It *is* terrifying though, so I guess sort of appropriate here too. :D

Hey everyone. I put up the first part of the build tutorial/logbook here: http://www.halloweenforum.com/tutorials-step-step/111710-technological-tombstone-terror-build-log-tutorial.html

Let me...

This is the tutorial/build log for my "Technological Tombstone of Terror" which is shown here:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exwQtq1GEOk

Part 1:

A few people expressed interest in a...

Thanks for the feedback, everyone! (Yes, a corny name. I was up way too late and getting punchy by the time I needed to name it. :D)

It's basically finished *before* Halloween which is a...

Hey Everyone,

I did my annual Halloween "make one new thing a year" routine this week and it turned out pretty decent. I present to you: The Technological Tombstone of Terror!

...

Just a random update-- I've purchased most of the parts for a batch of the controllers, so I'll definitely have these available before the season this year. Hopefully early spring. :)

We're...

They're really consistent brightness in the plastic. Even though the LED pattern is wide angle because the 'flame' sits right on top of the LED all the light is captured in the plastic and...

Oi... That might be a bit more than I can take on! ;)

There's an awful lot of disciplines and software behind that relatively simple item. On the one hand there's electrical engineering to...

Since the LED outputs are all unique (there's no pattern or repeats on any of the outputs) I suspect that you could gang several together in a cluster and make much larger flames and/or use brighter...

They're 9000mcd warm white LEDs. The ones I had were from eBay and were originally on flex strips, but I desoldered them and just wired them up directly to save a little space.

If you search for...

Looks like a few of you would be interested in the light controllers, so I'll go ahead and turn those into something suitable for someone other than me to use. ;) Probably be a couple months before...

I might have written a post about that last year, but I can document it and put it in a new thread in the Tutorials section so it's findable. ;) I'll have to take some pictures over the weekend. ...

Hey everybody--

Thanks for the compliments. Everything made it through Halloween without any failures and the only damage was a flame getting broken off one of the candles (they're only hot-glued...

Before I forget... Here's the candles in action on Halloween 2010:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXkbVXpXSjo

That's basically the 'laser vortex' effect. Usually it's accomplished by just pointing a laser (green ones are bright and cheap) at a front surface mirror mounted at an angle on the shaft of a...