I finally finished my cauldron creep, complete with head turn. The cauldron can be moved away from the creep, and she remains free standing, with no unsightly external supports.
You did a no frame creep too? Did you run your support through the leg bones and spine? I used all thread for the internal frame of mine. They look soo much better without all the pvc framing!
Sorry, Nightfisher, I just noticed your question. Actually the only parts that are original skeleton parts are the legs, feet, arms, hands, head, neck, and front of rib cage. The rest is PVC. I split the leg bones lengthwise and used my Dremel to hollow out the internal structures, and then epoxied 1/2 inch PVC inside the length of them. Then I epoxied the leg bone halves back together. I ran the PVC down the larger of the two lower leg bones all the way to the foot.Now I can attach (or detach for storage) the femur to the lower leg with a 1/2 inch PVC fitting painted to match the corpsed skeleton. The femurs attach to the PVC hips with PVC fitting I''d epoxied into the top end of the bones. It makes it nice because of course there's no external support structure, and I can easily detach the legs from the hips for storage. Now I just pound a couple of rebar stakes into the ground, slide the lower legs over them, and WALAH! A free standing skeleton.
Very similar to how I did it, especially in the hip area like you describe. I used and entire skelly in mine though. I matched my all thread up to the legs with the bend I wanted posed, then bent the thread to match. After that I just had to drill a hole in the ends of all the bones and slip them over the threaded rod. Used a PVC tee in the hips to lock the rod into the hips. I can't believe how few of us have done internal frames vs the external pvc frame. Looks so much better both day and night. Liking your leering skelly with the lantern too. I might do one eventually, but I want to come up with a unique twist on it first.
Actually, I just realized, I got my projects confused in my head, and blended them together in my explanation. What I was describing where I only used parts of the skeleton and where I installed PVC inside of the leg bones was when I built my cauldron creep. What I described doing with the wooden dowel rod through the spine and down into the tombstone was what I did with the leering skeleton, in which case I used the whole skelly. Holy Hell, where am I? Maybe somebody should call someone or something. In my next installment I'll tell you all how I changed the brake pads on my car using two cups of flour, two eggs, one cup of sugar...