I’ve wanted to spend some time making grotesque Halloween decorations ever since we bought our home and this year I was ready!

I started with the $50 pose-n-stay skeletons you can get at every major outlet store. I removed this poor guy’s legs, broke his arms off and attached him to some branches I found on a walk with my dog. I used wood screws and zip ties to crucify him on there.

Next step was using a combination of wadded up cotton and liquid latex to corpsify him! This involves painting on the latex and then adding strips of cotton, followed by more latex until it’s built up to look like dried tissue still clinging to the bone.

The next step involved using freaky fabric and layering that in to create some extra texture. We used burlap and hemp to fashion him a hood and wrapped the whole thing up with some frayed rope. We cut some holes and frayed the edges of the hood to make it look weathered and worn.

We had just seen, “IT” and so I went to the store and bought a single red balloon to put down the storm drain just for fun 🙂

Some additional props I made involved gunking up a bunch of skulls and making a weathered sack for them to hang in off our house. These skulls were $4.99 each at Target. I went over each one with a dremel tool and carved out the teeth, removing some all together to create variations.

I used another skull and some spare jaws I had to create this spiked totem. You can see the latex/cotton combination with the freaky fabric draped over the top.

After a few coats of paint they start to look positively gruesome!

Here’s the spiked head totem fully painted up!

Combined with some out door LED strobe lights my creations give off just the right vibe!