Props and decorations from my ancient Egyptian tomb Halloween party
Published October 31st, 2017
Here are a bunch of my decorating projects for my ancient Egyptian tomb themed Halloween party. You can also see the animated invitation here, and I have this separate article about the paper maché sarcophagus I made.
Hieroglyphs wall coverings
This was a huge project and didn't work out perfectly, but the effect was still pretty cool anyway! I made my own stencils and spray painted them onto a couple hundred sheets of craft foam and taped them to the walls of our apartment. The stencils themselves I made out of sheets of craft foam, and I taped pennies along the edges to help weigh them down while spray painting. I also built a little station out of foam board to help with painting. All of this was not perfect because the stencils would warp a bit after multiple uses, which resulted in some blurry imagery, and the spray paint would pool and drip in some places. Who cares, it's just Halloween! Still looked pretty cool. Oh yeah, and after they were on the walls I added vertical lines of black masking tape in between the columns of printed sheets.
Giant scarab beetle decorations
These things were super easy; I just started with some cheap plastic bowls from the dollar store and modified them with scissors and tape and stuff, then covered them with paper maché. The legs are wire taped onto craft foam, so they're pretty flexible.
Spiked ceiling decoration
Our apartment at the time had a little private hallway; you'd come up the main stairs of the building, and then enter a door into this little hallway (maybe 5' x 8'), and then arrive at the real door of the apartment. I had the idea to turn this area into the kind of tunnels and corridors that archeologists would have to get through to reach a real tomb in a pyramid. This spiked ceiling decoration was fun but not very practical; I set it to have the spikes at about five feet high, so guests would have to duck under it as they came into our place. The whole thing was just paper cones and some foam board. Fun!
You can see I also made brick shapes for the walls using the same craft foam I used for the hieroglyphs. I just taped em up; easy!
Pickaxe and shovel props
I also made these pickaxe and shovel props to sit in our little private hallway, before people entered the apartment. They're just some foam board and tape and rolled-up paper and a little bit of paper maché; they're flimsy as hell and they don't look great up close. That's Halloween, baby! You can see I put some lanterns with them, and some spooky cloth on the window there.
Anubis mask
This mask was such a rush job and I really wasn't thrilled with how it came out so I never put together a full article about it.
That's about it! This party theme was a fun one!