Years ago, I used to put on a pretty great Halloween show at my house. Each year it grew more and more, and while I had a few pre-made props and store-bought animatronics, I took a lot of pride in the number of homemade props I added to the show each year. This included my siamese twins (that I still have in my office), a skull/spine bird feeder, a Grim Reaper built on an oscillating fan, Sam from Trick-r-Treat, and more.

I lost my Halloween mojo for a few years, but I’m happy to say that I have it back! This year we stepped into a brand-new phase at Casa de Firefly: the return of prop making! We hosted our biennial Halloween party last week and we pulled out all the stops, making sure to include a very rude pit-master grilling body parts, colored lights strewn about, horror films projected onto the house, a creepy “peeper” in the bathroom window and more.

But I spent most of my time on two projects: a homemade marquee that would sit on the pergola over our garage, and a homemade ticket booth that welcomes guests.

The ticket booth started as a sketch in my notebook. I knew I wanted to construct a light box on the top so the word TICKETS could be illuminated, and I wanted the bars in front of my ticket taker to be broken:

I had an idea of where I wanted it to go, so I measured out how much space I had – roughly seven-feet high, three-feet wide, 18-inches deep — so I modified my sketch accordingly. I also included a ticket slot.

I wanted to use only scrap wood from my garage stash, and lucky me, I had a few 3-foot 1x7s ready to go. Perfect for the counter, back brace, and light box. The light box is where I wanted to start, so I found a font I liked (I think it’s called dBacks) and wrote out the word TICKETS in Photoshop on a 3’x7” canvas. From there, I printed the design off in 8”x10” segments, used a simple paper slicer to cut out the rectangle around the design, then taped the edges together.

Next, I laid out a sheet of graphite paper on top of my lumber, then taped the design down on top and traced the letters with a pencil, thereby drawing the design on the wood. For safety sake, I went ahead and re-traced the letters on the wood with a red Sharpie, then cut the letters out with my jigsaw.

From there, I began work on the structure, itself, utilizing some scrap 2x4s held together by pocket hole screws and old 1x7s that came off an old piece of deck I removed a couple years ago.

The “bars” are 1x1s that I cut to size and the broken bars were roughly sawed with a handsaw then broken over my knee. Finally, after creating a small platform where it could sit, I constructed a small box from scrap 1×7 using the cut-out lettering as the front. The top of the box is held on with a simple set of hinges so I could open and close from the top.

I’d done a pretty good job of assembling everything with stuff I already had, but I ended up having to pick up multiple cans of spraypaint for the rough paint job. The entire body is painted with a combination of flat black and chalkboard paint (we had a little of both) and the bars were painted with a silver metallic. The box was hit mostly with red, but I went around the edges with a bit of black just for design sake, though it doesn’t really matter after dark.

The light box was then completed with some plastic sheets covering the inside of the letters to diffuse the light inside; the inside is lined with aluminum foil to reflect the light and I ran a small strand of cheap LEDs along the inside that can be controlled with a remote.

BOOM! We have a ticket booth! But we weren’t done yet.

Of course, I would use one of our many skellies as a ticket taker (this time wearing my American flag hat, my Ghost muscle shirt, and smoking a cigar). He was originally lit by a red spotlight I had in the garage, but at the last minute, I went with a spare strobe that I came across with a variable speed flash, which created a cool effect.

The best part, though? 

I found this motion-activated speaker with flash memory that allows you to upload whatever sound you want to it. Since Katie and I were dressed as Insane Clown Posse’s Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope, we kept that theme going with our props. I rigged our motion-activated speaker to use the line from ICP song “Halls of Illusion,” – “Ticket please! Thanks, walk through the doors!”

Ultimately, I was very proud of how this came out. We had him sitting just before the bottom step on our front porch, so everyone who came in had to walk by it and be greeted by our ticket taker. I have to think the strobe inside, the broken bars and the color-changing sign was a cool look from the street, too!

What a great way to let everyone in the neighborhood know I’m back, baby!

Tomorrow, I’ll talk about my marquee. Until then…

-jtf

This is post 2 of 30 in my most recent attempt at tackling NaBloPoMo. Funsies and such.