Halloween Project: The Great Pumpkin Patch – Part I

Welcome to the Halloween Season — well, technically we here at Intrigued are haunt focused 364 days a year (we take the day after our annual Halloween Haunted Trail event to rest up before starting on next year’s new additions. Speaking of the trail, this year’s extravaganza was held last weekend and based on the feedback we are getting – another complete success! As usual, we learned a few things, have a few things to tweak and more importantly, a bunch of new ideas to make next year even better. Taking a break from putting everything back in storage to give you a behind the scenes look at one of our signature props we added for our guest’s enjoyment this year. Definitely one of our larger projects and will likely take several posts to get you all the pertinent details. Let’s get to it shall we?!

I have always wanted an elaborate entrance to the trail. A defining start vs just pointing them into the woods and telling them to have fun. Depending on the moon, it can also get rather dark in the woods making it even harder to locate the right path to the trail. Unable to remember the exact video, but one of the haunt centric YouTubers I follow – GrimmLifeCollective – (link here) showcased a place that had a stacked pumpkin arch in one of their scenes. That got the juices flowing and started investigating ways to produce one of our own. I do not have the budgets of some of these large production scare factories, so cost was a key element – that and the ability to store it. A big shout out to Allen at Stiltbeast Studios (link here). for getting the ball rolling. His video on making a foam pumpkin (link here) was the basis for what became our signature piece.

Clearly I would need BIGGER pumpkins to use in our entry arch and I wanted to be able to carve and light them up like real pumpkins. Allen’s approach did have a hollow core, but also required you to essentially have a beach ball buried inside each pumpkin. When I saw the cost of beach balls that were the size I wanted to use, that approach had to be improved. Noodled on it for a couple of weeks and then it hit me – I don’t have to create the entire pumpkin at once. With a working plan, materials were ordered and set to work.

The first ingredient was the beach ball. The initial vision was to have three different sized pumpkins that got smaller as they were stacked up – smallest being the size of the standard ball you see kids playing with or bouncing around concert venues. From there, found two more offerings each significantly bigger than that. A bit shocked at the prices – the largest (42″) was $30, the medium (36″) was $23 and a pack of 3 standard (20″) were $13. Per comment above, needing one for each pumpkin was cost prohibitive. Note, a quick look at Amazon revealed that they are heavily discounted now that the swim season is coming to a close. Now with the pumpkin forms procured, there needed to be a method to help hold the foam and still be able to reuse the ball.

Hit the jump to see how these everyday beach accessories evolved into our latest Haunted Trail of Tears signature addition.

If I formed half at a time, I could deflate the balloon and extract it from the foam pretty easy. Decided to use a cardboard “stop” to help support the foam and give me a nice edge to marry up to the other half. Used a sewing tape measure to measure midpoint of the ball from the top and mark that point around the ball. As most pumpkins are not actually round, added additional markings that were an inch further down so I could elongate the middle part (will explain this later). Used the marks to get the circumference size of the inflated ball – employed a bit of grade school math (D=C/II and R=D/2) to get the radius of the circle that needed to be cut out of the piece of cardboard. Also added another circle as a thickness reference when applying the foam.

Here is what I was referring to with the additional “elongating” marks. Midpoint was at 11″ inches so I added another mark at 12, 13 and 14 inches to give me options. After playing with the cardboard at different placements, pretty sure I went with the two extra inches (13″in the small sized ball). Be sure and get the circumference of the position you plan to use as the farther down you go, the smaller the hole needed.

This was a test fit for the small ball – eventually moved the cardboard position to the lower mark and turned the ball over so the nozzle was at the bottom – that would have been a stupid mistake had I not caught that. You will probably need to inflate the ball further to hold the cardboard on – they have pretty good expansion so you can be heavy handed on the air – Warning: YOU DO NOT WANT THE CARDBOARD TO SLIP.

Next step is to slather the exposed ball with Vaseline to keep the foam from sticking to your form. From there, you simply cover the top half of the balloon with foam – I highly recommend spending the small amount extra to get LocTite:Tite Foam Gaps & Cracks. This foam is a lot easier to manage and skins after 5 minutes so you can manipulate the shape. As you can see from the shot below, I was able to put in the pumpkin ridges – used the color separation lines to give me the spacing.

This same process was used on the other larger balls – as you probably realized, you will have a separate cardboard frame for each size, so be sure and keep them labeled and handy. This is a shot of the largest ball in the frame – I did add some support boards underneath it to help hold the cardboard up and keep the ball from moving around.

For the first attempts (the smaller ball above) I was pretty heavy with the foam using up one can on each side (so two cans to make each of the small pumpkins). For the larger pumpkins, I got smarter and thinned out the walls by using a smaller foam bead. The extra circle put on the cardboard frame allowed me to adjust the thickness once the foam skinned.

The medium ball took 2 cans a side (4 for each ball) and the largest one took 3 cans (6 per ball). At the time, each can was $4.88 – last I looked they were around $6.50 (thanks Brandon). The bottom was going to have a hole cut out for the light, so on those I left a gap in the foam allowing me to put more on the sides to give it a less rounded look – recommend putting a cross across the gap to help keep the foam from sliding back down. Once you have applied all the foam, spray a light coat of water on it to help it cure.

After the foam cured, simply turned it over, deflated the ball and pulled it away. The Vaseline keeps it from sticking to the plastic sides of the ball. The dried foam is pretty durable, but can still be damaged if you push too hard trying to get the ball out. Just slowly slide your hand between the ball and the foam and it should peel away easily (wear latex gloves if you don’t want to moisturize your hands with the Vaseline coating.)

Just to give you a perspective of the larger sized pumpkin.

Once the half shells are created, simply use more of the LocTite foam to join the two halves. Spray a layer of foam around the edge of the shell, line up the pumpkin ridges and press them together. To keep from wasting cans of foam, I’d put all of them together at the same time. With any left over, you can add foam to any large gaps you see on the pumpkin sides.

Now for the messy part. Regardless of how careful you are, the foam is going to behave differently both on the same pumpkin and between the different sizes. Some areas will expand more than others, some of the grooves may fill in a bit etc. No worries, the foam is very tolerant of being sanded. Recommend some heavy grit (60 to 80) on an orbital sander. WEAR A MASK! You really do not want to be breathing those chemicals or the foam dust particles into your lungs. You will look like you’ve been in a snowstorm once this process is complete.

Here are the larger and medium sized pumpkins once they were sanded – added the 5 gallon bucket as a handy size reference.

The pumpkins are now ready to carve. It took me a solid month to figure out the faces I wanted for each pumpkin. Linda laughed at me as I poured through eye/nose/mouth combinations day after day. Had a lot of time invested in these now and didn’t want to ruin them with a crappy expression. Once selected, I created an image file and moved them to a projector. This allowed me to draw the faces directly on the pumpkins without having to invest time making a pattern.

Cutting the pattern out is probably the most enjoyable step in this entire process. I have a nice hot knife cutter that did short work of this phase. In the face selection effort, it was determined more teeth equals scarier expression – that decision definitely increased the effort required during the carving phase ha. Warning: if using a method that involves melting to cut the face you MUST do this in a well ventilated area (outside) and wear a mask sufficient to protect you from the chemical smells. They are quite dangerous.

Threw lights under a couple of them to see how they would look. Couple of things – first, the white foam actually glowed more than I originally expected and there were gaps in the foam which allow more light than you probably want to escape. Beyond that – complete success so far.

I didn’t go into the stem part of the pumpkin during the shell phase. You might have noticed there were nubs at the top. Those were more a result of putting the ridges in than a conscious effort to put a stem on – just balled up the extra foam there as I was running my fingers up the sides. The reason is, I planned to add formal stems later. This was done pretty much freehand. Made a pile of foam, let it skin and then shaped it to look like a stem. Once that cured, went back in with a Dremel and added definition to the ridges and cut the gaps in deeper. Did try to make three different sizes to match the pumpkin shells.

When those dried, went to each of the pumpkins, cut the nub off, put foam down on the bottom of the stem and stuck it on. You can shape the stems part that attaches to the pumpkin once that skins – make sure there is new foam under the entire bottom of the stem so you get a good connection to the pumpkin. The pumpkin construction phase is officially done – now need to add a protective layer of paint.

Paint is a loose interpretation. After investigating various options, decided to go with what the haunt industry refers to as Monster Mud. Spray paints and other similar options will eat through the foam – well, technically the chemicals they use to propel the paint out of the can. Monster Mud is a combination of sheet rock plaster and latex exterior paint. The mixtures very depending on what you are planning to do with it. I went with a rough 4:1 ration. It really comes down to feel – I wanted it to be thin enough to paint onto the pumpkins, but thick enough to help fill in gaps. Recommend just filling up a small container with the plaster and then keep adding in the latex paint until it “feels” right once mixed. Write down what the ratio you ended up using so you can repeat the process for the rest of the pumpkins. Now for a hint – try to get the missed tint clearance paint – every store that mixes paint has a clearance area where the workers screwed up or the customer wasn’t happy with the color. Just make sure it is exterior latex. If you get lucky like I did, you will find one close to the final color you want. If not, you can always grab a bottle of hobby acrylic paint to tint to desired color. In my case, I found a burnt orange that I then added a very bright orange to brighten it up. Again, write down all the ratios of what you uses so you can repeat it.

The mud is thicker than paint so standard brushes will not work as well – pick up a bag of chip brushes – they work great, stiff enough to hold the paint and then you can just toss them at the end of a paint cycle. I did not paint the inside of mine to allow it to produce a brighter light inside, but did catch all the cut edges. Put it on thick to help reduce the gaps – some will remain and you can choose to touch those up later – Linda and Ron convinced me not to worry too much about the gaps as it gave “form” to the pumpkins at night. I did clean up the face sides a bit.

Once mudded, I could then apply a coat of Polyurethane. The mud prevented the foam from being eaten by the propellant and gave additional protection from the elements. Also used a satin finish to give them a shinier look – the mud will dry more matte. Almost forgot to mention. The stems were painted in the same way, just used a green shade for the acrylic base instead of the orange. Here is a quick shot Ron took of a finished pumpkin. Note the small pin gaps that still made it through my touch-ups. Consensus was, everyone wants me to keep those as it does give better shape at night.

The first part of the pumpkin arch was finally done! Extremely happy with how they came out.

As a side note, I originally looked into simply buying the pumpkins to use for the arch. I’ve used the smaller foam pumpkins at Michael’s for my annual carved pumpkins for years. Problem is they don’t really come bigger than 12 to 16 inches. Plus they are ridiculously priced even at that small size. My smallest pumpkin dwarfs those. Eventually spied a possible option on a trip to Hobby Lobby with Linda. They had a foam pumpkin there that could possibly be used for the top (smallest) part of the arch.

Turned over the price tag and nearly had a heart attack. Holy crap!

Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen. I can buy a lot of cans of foam for that price. Granted, it took a lot of work to get these pumpkins created, carved and painted, but in the end extremely pleased at how well they turned out. Stay tuned for part two where we work on creating the arch frame.