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

Monster Prom band, part 1: alien drummer!


Published by Manning on October 29th, 2024

For our Monster Prom Halloween party, my main project was our monster new wave band. I started with the alien drummer because I knew he would be the easiest!

The first idea I had in creating the drummer was to re-use my paper maché alien mask from last Halloween as the head of the drummer. So that saved me a ton of time and materials right off the bat!

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.

I also realized I could save time by making the drums those 1980s hexagonal electronic drums — this goes perfectly with our theme and would be easier/faster to make than a bunch of more realistic round drums and cymbals.

Big brain alien playing a set of hexagonal electronic drums

The alien sitting on my dining room table without his drums

The alien sitting at his unpainted drum set

Side view of the alien set up in my back yard at his drums, but his head is missing

Front view of the alien set up in my back yard at his drums, but his head is missing

Nighttime view of the alien set up at his drums; the bass drum jack o' lantern face is lit up.

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

I made the body for the drummer out of pieces of foam board and poster board, all held together with a little hot glue and a lot of masking tape. I didn’t do any paper maché for the body at all; if I’d had more time I would have covered the whole thing in paper maché. But for this short-lived decoration, foam and tape and spray paint are good enough. When you do spray paint over a sculpture of foam and masking tape you can definitely see all the tape lines everywhere, but I was okay with that for this thing. (Fyi, I avoid spray paint over shipping/packing tape, because those remain really shiny when painted and they look ugly.)

Note: I use Scotch brand masking tape, which holds really well over time. Cheaper brands of tape tend to curl and come un-stuck after a few days — and the same is true for blue painter’s tape. If you’re going to cover a taped-up sculpture in paper maché right away this isn’t a big deal. But for a project like this where I’m not doing paper maché, it’s critical to use Scotch brand masking tape so it stays stuck.

I made the drums and stool out of foam board as well. For the the stands to hold the drums up, and for the base of the stool, I made a few narrow triangular shapes out of foam board. Triangles are always the strongest and easiest shapes you can make. These things still ended up feeling a little flimsy! Obviously for a more permanent sculpture I could’ve used wood for these supporting pieces and that would’ve been much, much stronger.

For the bass drum, I cut out a jack o’ lantern face shape and put a big piece of thick translucent foam behind it, and I taped lights behind the face right before our party started.

Pretty easy! I’m happy with how all of this came out. Now on to the more difficult monster musicians…

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