Manning Makes Stuff - Halloween decorations, paper mache masks, costumes, party ideas, and more

Making giant paper maché Pez candies

I made these giant paper maché Pez candies to go with my scary clown Pez dispenser prop for Halloween 2018! I made half a dozen of them, one to go in the Pez dispenser and the others to have strewn around nearby. They were easy to make! Here’s how I did ’em…

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Giant scary clown Pez dispenser!!! — part 1

I made this 6-foot scary-ass clown Pez dispenser for my Halloween party in 2018! The idea came to me when I was working on some other giant candies and realized this would be a pretty easy project that would really add to the overall ambiance.

My first step for this project was laying everything out in Photoshop and figuring out the exact measurements for the “body” of the Pez dispenser — the evil clown head I pretty much just freestyled!

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Custom SLY skull trophy sculpture

I made this skull sculpture (skullpture??) for my good friend, Twitch superstar Slyvinlisha, aka Sly. I made the sculpture based on two different versions of her logo illustration, pictured below.

I started with a nice plastic skull from one of my Halloween skeleton decorations that broke in half due to a spooky Halloween mishap! I broke the neck off at the base and put the rest of the bones away to use for other Halloween decorating purposes. Read more…

Paper maché Necronomicon sculpture — part 2

This is part two of two of my paper maché demonic book project. See part one here.

Making the 3d “BOO!” logo

To create the “BOO!” logo in the mouth, I started out by printing several copies of the logo (designed by my friend Jon Morris) at the actual size; I’d planned out my sketch for the face along with the logo in Photoshop so I’d be able to plan all of these parts to fit together the way I wanted.

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Ouija board wall decoration

For all my Halloween parties, I try to have at least one big decorated area that makes for a good backdrop for photos. This time our main photo area was this big ouija board wall decoration. It was really easy to do and ended up in a ton of our guests’ photos.

The letters and shapes are all cut out from black poster board. I photographed and measured the wall, and designed the arrangement of the letters in Photoshop to fill up the space nicely. Here’s what that looked like:

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Making a light-up VOODOO sign with Christmas lights

Check out my new VOODOO sign! This is for this year’s Voodoo Bayou Halloween party. This sign was easy to make and doesn’t involve any power tools or wood. The letters are made from disposable aluminum cookie trays with Christmas lights poking through, and the base is just foam board and paper. We hung the sign on our front balcony, sticking out so people could see it when they’re walking up our street. Here’s how I made the sign:

I decided to reuse the box shape that I’d made for last year’s sign. Last year I made a last-minute “ASYLUM” sign for our haunted asylum party. The letters were just plain white paper, and I set up a clip lamp with a red bulb in front of it to illuminate the sign a bit. Here’s what that looked like:

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Haunted asylum Halloween party theme

The theme for my Halloween party in 2014 was: haunted insane asylum! I made up a name for our old-timey asylum: Tranquility Meadows Lunatic Asylum, and I chose red as my main color for the ambiance of the party. Here’s some info about all of the decorations we made, our costumes, and the animated invitation we sent out, all with the goal of fleshing out the theme and establishing a great spooky mood for the event.

Invitation — I make an animated invitation for each of my Halloween parties; it really helps set the mood and establish the color scheme and give people some inspiration for their costumes. Here’s the invitation for the haunted asylum party! Read more…

Cabaret de L’Enfer Halloween party — light-up sign

For my Cabaret de L’Enfer-themed Halloween party in 2012, I made this fun light-up sign that I hung sticking out from my front balcony so that guests could see it as they approached my apartment. This was an easy project that made for a really impressive effect! Here’s how I did it…

I made the box shape out of foam board; of course you can just use a cardboard box if you can find one that’s the right size. I cut the pieces of foam board to size with an X-acto knife, and assembled the whole box shape, minus the front panel, with heavy duty Scotch packing tape.
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