Alec – Page 3 – An Unorthodox Halloween

45….

Only 45 days left.

Many fewer for me. On travel next week, perhaps another week in October…

Fortunately, there’s not a lot that I really NEED done that couldn’t wait till next year.

Working on the commission piece for Diablos Dome.

From 2011 buildup

Going great. Hoping the weather holds off long enough to finish up today. (yeah right, when does weather cooperate)

All that Jute netting I bought has been real nice for building these things…

From 2011 buildup

…I’m just not sure I’ll have enough left for the intented purpose I bought it for.

Vampires in the house!

From 2011 buildup

Don’t know why the kids love these so much. Glad they do.

Personally, I’m hoping to find some Count Chocula….

Bridge 80%

Been busy over here. Starting a new job, couple different injuries to my left shoulder/ribs (and I’m a lefty), which explains a lot of the quiet around here.

But, this last weekend, we got a lot of work done on the bridge, with a lot of help from the boys. Especially Kyle.

From Bridge of Death

He did a lot of the heavy lifting, nailing, drilling, etc. But, Alec is responsible for the random nature of the design.

From Bridge of Death

This is something of a miracle as it’s the first time he’s understood “random”. Just 9 months ago, his idea of random was p e r f e c t l y s p a c e d s k u l l s.

From The Harvest

So, bridge is about 80% for this year. We need to figure out the corner…

From Bridge of Death

And, need one more section at the end.

From Bridge of Death

Then we need some kind of ramp at either end…don’t know how I’m doing that yet.

Going to be doing a bunch of business travel for the foreseeable future as well, so, hopefully we can finish this off.

Captain Alec’s Skull Shop.

Day 1 of the ‘mini society’ sells was this afternoon…

And, with that, Announcement sign V 2.0 made it’s debut.

From 2011 buildup

Since it’s creation last year, the announcement sign has found use after use, and the need for it to travel finally resulted in the new stand construction. Couple of quick A frames, and some keyhole brackets on the back of the board make it fully collapsible for transport. I want to get a couple of proper brackets ala ladders for the legs, but the rope served it’s purpose for now. The ultimate plan is to build 3 more sets of A frame legs, one shorter, and 2 of the same sizes for Sign 3.5…

As you may have noticed, we were not the only ones out being a little off-beat at the selling day either. Our neighbors were also thinking October, and together we made a little Halloween center!

From 2011 buildup

Of course, that was my cousin’s (and former neighbor) store. We hadn’t purposely planned it, and I found it most amusing, myself.

So, how did the Halloween alley do? Here they are with a line at both.

From 2011 buildup

One more sale day in 2 weeks…

From 2011 buildup

Alec sold out of the large skulls (10) and nearly sold out of the small (35/40)…and probably could have sold out if I hadn’t needed to get going right at shut-down, due to scheduling today… The Trick or Treat bags next door sold all but the display bags.

Deja-Vu

Several years ago, Kyle come home with this rather annoying project: Build something to sell in school for phony money. At the time, our house was all about skulls, with a goal of ‘100 skulls’ for the yard (which somehow turned into over 300…), and so Kyle wanted to make some for school as well. That project spawned our first tutorial on how to make molds.

From Molds

And Talia was such a wee one at the time…

From Molds

Well, that project has cropped up again. Where Kyle decided to make skulls because that’s what was going on in the house at the time, Alec wants to make them because Kyle’s business was so successful, bringing home all kinds of loot from the auction…

From Molds

So, our house is once again turned into a skull factory. With any luck, Alec will prove once again, Halloween items hold their own even in the spring.

It also seems this environment of skulls has gotten into Talia’s blood, as she made me “a scary Bob monster!” (Bob, of course, is our paper mache skeleton, since creating, ALL skeletons are ‘Bob’ in Talia’s eyes)

Just think…we’ll probably be making MORE skulls in a few years…

Assorted Project run-down.

So, just to recap…

We have the armor project ongoing. Not a lot of new stuff to show there, just lots of boring technical stuff. Chest and shoulders done, both legs are getting close, had to start over on the arms, so only one is close. We just bought some nice buttons to attach the shoulder pieces, and will have some nice visual improvements in the next week or so.

Meanwhile, Talia’s pinata is all but done in construction. It’s stuffed with prizes, and the final coat (covering the hole and adding the string and legs) is drying now. One really crappy unicorn will need some paint soon.