Sunken ship Halloween party aboard the RMS Albatross!
Published by Manning on July 14th, 2015
This was my Halloween party theme in 2011! Halloween in a sunken cruise ship! Basically an underwater Titanic-type thing. Our color scheme for this party was blue and green, and we made tons of decorations to go with the theme of a formal ball underwater. Here’s the animated invitation I made. (It has audio, and it’s made with Flash, so it won’t work on an iPhone/iPad.)
Here are some of the decorations we made:
Paper fish — I printed out tons of photos of fish on blue and green paper; I arranged them in Photoshop so they’d be double sided and mirrored so I could cut them out, fold them up, and staple them closed. I stuffed a tiny bit of bubble wrap into each one to give them a little bit of volume, and then I hung them up all over the ceiling with tape and fishing line and thumbtacks. I think I made about fifty of them! I also took a few of them and taped them on the walls in the stairwell of our builing, in a line leading people right to our door. Oh yeah, I also draped a big net over our bathroom mirror and stuck a bunch of the fish in there, like they’d just been caught.
Seaweed — We made seaweed buy taking green crepe paper ribbon and crumpling it up by hand. We hung this stuff everywhere; in doorways, over the curtain rods, taped to the ceiling, etc. The seaweed and the fake fishes hanging everywhere created a really neat feeling of being underwater.
Inflatable shark — I broke a rule of mine by using a store-bought decoration, but this thing was too good to resist! I hung this seven-foot long shark on the ceiling with fishing line and three of those little screw-in hook things. This was way before I was addicted to doing big paper maché projects, so if I had it to do all over again I would try making my own paper maché shark.
Lighting — I replaced all the light bulbs in the apartment with blue and green fluorescent party bulbs. I also bought a great (but expensive!) lighting effect: the American Dj H2O Led Water Effect Light. This thing projects an animated image of rippling water on your walls and/or ceiling, and you can set the color to whatever you want, or set it to rotate through all colors in a sequence. I set the color wheel to the spot just between blue and green, and projected it onto the walls and ceiling of the whole dining room and living room area.
Wallpaper — My biggest challenge with decoration for Halloween parties is: what to do with all these big plain white walls? White walls in a modern apartment are the least spooky thing in the world. I’m always looking for a way to transform our space into something darker and spookier. This year, since I was going for a very old-timey feel, I decided to try to make old-timey wallpaper! I used rolls of brown wrapping paper and I made my own stamp out of foam board using an X-acto knife. I found an old wallpaper pattern online and modified it to include a skull and some seahorses, printed it out, traced it onto foam board, and cut it out. I glued that onto another piece of foam board, and that was my stamp. I boguht a huge bottle of cheap black tempera paint, painted it onto the stamp with a wide paintbrush, and pressed that onto the paper. It worked great! The end result is definitely a little imperfect and sloppy, but this is a haunted ship, so who cares?!
Note: I put the wallpaper pattern onto the paper while it was laid out on the floor, and then hung up the paper when it was dry. I wouldn’t risk applying the stamp with the paint directly to paper that’s already on the walls; too risky, you never know if the paint might seep through and stain the wall.
Ghostly portraits — We have a lot of black picture frames on our living room wall, and I usually design images in Photoshop to print out and put in ’em for every year’s Halloween party theme. This year I did nautical-themed pictures using a combination of photos of our invitees as well as the hosts (and our bunnies!), mashed up with old-timey nautical pics. I put together a whole post with all of them here.
Costumes — I don’t have any great pictures of our costumes, but my fiancée and I were both dressed in old-fashioned formalwear and made up like drowned zombies. I drew on a pencil-thin mustache, slicked my hair back, and I had a plastic fish in the front pocket of my jacket. Fun!
That’s about it! I loved exploring this theme and coming up with all these decorations. I’d love to do another sunken ship party down the line, but instead of Titanic-era, make it all about pirates and mermaids!
About Manning Krull
How to make a 4-foot paper maché alligator
My violin skull mask, Mardi Gras 2015
Three-headed paper maché dragon sculpture
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