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

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

Foam board guitar prop


Published by Manning on October 30th, 2024

I made this very simple foam guitar prop for the demonic singer of our monster new wave band. It was so easy and fun to make! It’s really just mostly foam board with a little hot glue and a lot of tape.

A pink electric guitar; looks pretty real!

I first drew and cut out a guitar shape from foam board. I traced the head and neck to make a second foam board copy of those and glued them in place behind the main shape.

I’m putting this disclaimer on all my Halloween 2024 (Monster Prom) projects: I was in such a panic this year I did not take many progress photos of anything! And the pics I did take are at really random stages. So I’ll dump all my pics for each project near the top, and just write up all my steps below those.

The backside of the guitar prop showing that it's hollow and has no back

My demonic singer prop with the guitar prop hanging around her shoulders as she puts both hands on the microphone

The demonic singer prop outside at night with the guitar prop hanging around her shoulders

The whole band set up together at night; demonic singer/guitarist lady, Frankenstein keytar player, and alien drummer.

I then cut out long narrow strips of foam board to be the outer edges of the guitar body. I curled these up in my hands and then taped them in place all around the body. There’s no back surface to the guitar body; it’s just open on the back.

I cut out the tuning pegs from a piece of craft foam and glued it behind the head. The pick guard is also craft foam, as are the pickups and knobs and stuff.

That’s it! I spray painted all these pieces separately and then glued them together. Oh yeah, for the frets, I used blue painter’s tape to mask out everything but the frets and then just spray painted. Easy. I made the dots between the frets with a hole punch and just glued those bits on.

I opted to not do anything for strings; I thought about attaching some sort of wires, or just painting strings, or whatever. In the end I just said screw it.

This thing was so easy and it came out really great. If this were meant to be a more permanent decoration, I would’ve covered the body and neck in paper maché before painting and assembling. No need here since it’s such a short-lived piece!

One Response to “Foam board guitar prop”

  1. InarticulateQuilter Says:
    October 30th, 2024 at 3:57 pm

    Obsessed with this build! I only got an RSS notification on this post, so the Recent Posts section was a godsend – I’m trolling all the Monster Prom posts and am more and more delighted with each one. Didn’t attend my own prom, would kill to attend this one! Happy Halloween!

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