Vamparilla 2009

New for 2009 was a female Vampire prop we named Vamparilla. She was lots of fun to make and she got lots of great comments on Halloween Night. The best thing we liked about her was how quick and easy she was to put together!

Not being much of a sculptor we buy foam-filled latex heads or Halloween masks and stuff them ourselves. That is usually where our monster props start their creation. And for this creature of the night we found a great foamed filled vampire head and some standard hands.

Before we go any further , we’d just want to say that we have found our all time favourite material to make body shapes out of! And that is… 6 inch thick foam mattresses! We will be keeping a creepy eye out for these at goodwill stores and garage sales from now on!

Using a long serrated loaf knife we can cut and shape an excellent shoulder & torso body in no time.

The next thing we did, using extreme care, (Beware) was to make an incisions with the knife in the “armpits“, the “neck“ and in between the “should blades“. Into these slits we slid and joined together the shoulder and neck bones which was ¾ inch white PVC pipe.

Next another incision was made to the bottom of the neck of the Vampire latex head and it was positioned on protruding neck bone. Our Lady Vampire prop was coming together

One thing that was going to be a problem was the fact that the paint job of the hands did not match the face. So all we did to solve this was to lightly spray paint the hands white and then dust on a little bit of blue, because we didn‘t have any purple that day.

Beside as any home haunter worth their hemlock knows – low light is our friend! Later we painted the nails with black nail polish which gave them the perfect Halloween finishing touch.

Next it was time to make Vamparilla’s dress. This took less than 20 minutes! We started out with a set of thrift store curtains and spray painted the fancy edge blue. We also did the same for the little straps that draw the curtain into a bunch.

Then we draped our vampire prop in used drop cloth plastic making sure that there was plenty billowing out at the bottom for crinoline. Over all of this we then drape one of the curtains and used one of the draw straps to belt cinch her waist. Then the other curtain was draped over her shoulders like a shawl.

Now to put some legs on this Halloween prop. Because Vampailla would be a static prop and her legs would be hidden by a dress we used a single 1 ½ black PVC pipe with a Tee at the base for her legs.

This is one of the benefits of using the 1 ½ black PVC pipe is that it makes for a far sturdier armature. Next we ran a piece of wood through the tee at the bottom and screwed it to the floor of the haunt.

You can also see how the cross piece of her shoulders fit into the top of the base pipe and there was a screw in the back of her neck from which we ran a wire to a wall stud. These two steps kept our Vampire prop from falling over onto anybody on Halloween Night.

The last thing we had to do to get Vamparilla ready to scary the trick-or-treaters was connect her arms. But because the arms came with red blood stains on a dress shirt, we quickly made a couple of sleeves by taking two pieces of white sheets (the kind you‘d make ghost Halloween costumes out of) and we spay painted the “cuff“ blue and simply draped them over the existing dress shirt. We think this simple technique worked out well enough. Especially in, say it with me now, “Low Light!”

And there you have it! A full figure static Vampire prop in less than 2 hours! Hope you enjoyed our Vamparilla – we sure did!

Click Here to see more Vamparilla Halloween images in her 2009 photo gallery.

More Haunted Halloween Props by Screaming Scarecrow.

Thanks for Dropping By.
Cheers ScreamingScarecrow.