BUILDING YOUR OWN HALLOWEEN PROPS

The key to building a haunted house on a small budget is to use your imagination. Once you have a good idea about what you want to do in your haunt just look around you. See what you have lying around you that can be transformed into an awesome halloween prop. Old fruniture, Cardboard Boxes, Styrofoam or even old clothes can be used to make good halloween props. I live in a rural area, and people like to dump their junk beside roads or other places. I have found some of my best props in these dumps. Any item that you can dress up with some paint or cheese cloth can be useful. Best of all is the fact that these items are free. There are lots of people out there who will give you scrap wood or other materials that can be used. Don't look at something and think where will this fit, but what you can make it in to. I was building an electric chair a few years back and had everything but the top that fits over the persons head. I dug around and found an old enamel bowl and painted it silver, tapped a hole in bottom fastened it with a coat hanger. Then I touched it up with some colored electrical wires and it looked good considering what I used on it. It always pays to keep the necessities on hand. Spray Paint, black plastic, cheese cloth, spray foam insulation, chicken wire and cardboard are some things that are good to use on props. Most of these materials are very inexpensive, and can be reused. I like things that are reusable, like black plastic. I use black plastic for all of my walls and ceilings. The neat thing about black plastic is that after halloween you just roll it up and put it away till next year. Corpses can be made easily out of chicken wire and burlap cloth. Make a frame out of PVC pipe or scrap wood, then use chicken wire to build a body and cover the wire with old cloth or burlap. You can usually find some type of cheap burlap cloth at walmart. Then just paint or stain the cloth a dirty looking color, add a skull or head of choice and you have a corpse. Prop building becomes an art form in it's own. Props are usually very expensive to buy, you could spend several hundred or even thousands of dollars on a few good props. I will buy props if I run across something neat or something cheap, but I enjoy building my own above all else. Just remember when you build your haunt think about what you can create with what you have lying around, you will be surprised at the halloween props you can build with the stuff you already have.