BillyJack O'Lantern and Halloween Diorama

BillyJack O'Lantern

This is the last of the Halloween decorations I made this year.  I call him BillyJack O'Lantern.  This doll is eleven inches toll.  I actually started working on him much earlier in the year, but put him aside to work on my walking stick while the weather was warm.

Diorama: old house, ravens ghosts, goblins and trick or treater.

This doll is paper mache' over a mixed media armature.  This anthropomorphic figure was inspired by the pattern used for the cloth dolls I made in my last blog post.  I liked the idea of portraying a figure in motion.  Once I had made a couple of pattern dolls, I decided to experiment  see what I could come up with using different media.

The head is made from homemade clay over a small Styrofoam ball. I was experimenting with various clay recipes this year.  I wanted to test the recipes to see how well they would work for craft projects.  There are many different types of craft clay on the market, but I was trying to find something I could use that I could make at home.  My craft projects are not very large.  I find that if I buy clay for a project that I end up throwing out a good bit of it.  Some types of clay will keep for a while, but by the time I am ready to use clay for another project it has usually dried out.  I made two types of clay.  If you are interested in read about
my clay experiments, check out my blog post for April 16, 2015.

The armature uses multiple materials.  The body was created from by making an armature of muslin stuffed with polyester fiberfill.  The arm and leg armatures were made from aluminum foil.  Once all of the armatures had been completed, they were assembled using masking tape.  The entire figure has an additional layer of masking tape as well to protect the cloth from the wet paper mache'.  After that it was just a matter of adding the paper mache', sanding, painting, and
sealing.  I actually had my Halloween projects completed by Halloween this year.  That is not always the case with some of my more complex Halloween projects.

I am also posting photos of one of my other Halloween projects, an old house with a lone trick-or-treater contemplating it.  The small green creatures are goblins.  If you look hard, you might be able to see the ghosts on the trees. I completed this project in December of last year.

Starting next week I should be back to blogging on Thursdays and Sundays.  (Well, one can always hope.)