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

The Devil Man and the Swamp Goddess

This old-timey photo of me and my fiancée — dressed as the Devil Man and a swamp goddess — is an edit of a photo by New Orleans photographer Kevin O’Mara, taken at our Voodoo Bayou Halloween party in 2015. In editing the pic in Photoshop I wanted to try to make it look like an authentic vintage Halloween card; I think it’s pretty close! Let’s see if this pic starts turning up in dumb listicles about terrifying old Halloween pics; I see those kinds of lists every year and half of the photos in them aren’t actually vintage, or aren’t actually Halloween-related.

You can see the original, unedited version of this pic (with crazy green lighting) in my post about making the foam board antlers for my fiancée’s headdress.

Halloween portraits for my sunken ship party

Every year I design graphics in Photoshop to print out and put in the picture frames on our living room wall. For my sunken ship party (which basically Titanic-themed) I put together pictures of some of the party guests, and the hosts, and our pet rabbits, and mixed them up with old-timey nautical photos and drawings. I printed them out and cut them to size and stuck ’em in the frames. It’s a totally cheap and easy decorating project that makes for a great effect, and people really got a kick out of it. Here are closeups of all of the portraits!
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