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| Photos by JJ Hermes and Katherine Reynolds |
You can keep your Christmas. Keep your Thanksgiving, your 4th of July, I don't even give two snaps about your Easter shenanigans. Just leave me a nice stack of Halloween on that table there and walk away slowly, cause I love me a fat, juicy plate of that business. And way so.
So tis the season, and all of that, but let's do a little review over what occurred this Halloween 2K10. Consider this a how-to if you are looking for ideas on how to make your house into a Mad Lab.
First of all, I did a LOT of research. Probably too much, if you ask my friends. And let me tell you, this was a tough one. All the labs I found online were either for the kiddos or for random PhD Physics program parties, and they were NOT creepy. Nerdy, yes, but creepy? Not by a long shot. Let's have a list of the projects which will be covered by this post.
1.)
Specimen Jars
2.)
Creepy Framed Silhouettes
3.)
Black Bird Wall Decor
4.)
Mad Scientist Multimedia Poster
5.)
Lights, Fog, Spiderwebs, and Lab Tarp
6.)
Delicious Shrimp Brain
7.)
Crawling Cockroach Brain Cupcakes
8.)
Test Tube Shots
9.)
Frozen Brain Cocktail
10.)
Squash the Atom Game
11.)
Eyeball Cluster Pinata
Decorating your MAD LAB
You're a mad scientist. You do creepy things with bio-hazardous collectables you just can't bring yourself to throw away (in the name of SCIENCE!). What do you do? You put them on display, thinking they will impress your guests. And they do. Here's what you'll need.
1. Glass Jars
2. Water
3. Food Coloring
4. Something Weird to Put in Said Jar
5. Specimen Labels
6. Twine/Cellophane
Glass containers are CHEAP. Go to GOODWILL. You'll find them for $.99-$5.00 a pop. If you find jars with a lid, awesome. If not, whatever - just slap some layered cellophane over the top and wrap with twine. Hunt for very strange things to put into the jars. I like:
sweet potatoes wrapped in twine (troll pancreas),
ginger (strange growths),
fennel (heart),
peeled grapes (eyes),
sizable tree seeds (demon seeds),
dish soap (makes foam for bile and urine),
feathers (gillyweed!),
cabbage (brain),
real brain (brain). If you live near a chinese supermarket, you'd be delighted to find that they carry such crazy things as
chicken feet, chicken uterus, pig's blood, fish heads, etc...the list goes on.
Once you've selected your strange attraction, drop in a couple drops of food coloring and fill with water. Seal your jar OR IT WILL STINK. I'm serious. If you want to reuse your jar, make sure you wear some gloves and dispose not in your backyard... Wrap twine around the top to make it look old.
Print out some specimen labels. I will upload some soon for you to print. To give it an antique appearance, do a light
wash with a yellow/brown acrylic or watercolor paint. Crinkle it up a little and put it in the microwave/oven to dry. Not to long or it will burn. Glue that baby on and write the
name/year/location found.
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| Google image search "head silhouette" and you'll come up with plenty of neat finds. Print them out and frame them. I spray painted a ton of frames I found at Goodwill a laqured white to tie them all together. Frames cost me about $1-2 each. |
I decorate my branch for each season that rolls around. This Halloween, I found some cute black birds at Michaels and put them all over my sparse branch. And guess what? I paint on my walls! You know why?
Cause you can paint them right back! Easy as pie, you should try it.
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| For this one, I taped some computer paper together and painted over them with a flesh colored paint. I then hunted for photos of Chalence's face (facebook) and an image of a "cheeky monkey" and "man body" (Google images). I printed and pasted them onto the makeshift canvas. With aluminum foil, I cut out helmets after gluing it onto a piece of paper to give it more body to work with, and rolled some up for the antennae. With some well placed paint, I created this cheap and easy gem, and put it on a framed painting I had in my dining room. |
I have a lot of valuables in my common areas. I don't mean electronics, as I have this unique ability to kill everything that uses electricity by simply having it. I'm talking books and collectibles I get from all over. I love my friends and I don't think they're kleptos at all, but friends of friends? Who knows what they're capable of. So I made it easy for them to stay honest and simply covered the booger out of my bookcases with spiderwebs strung tightly around the good stuff.
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| I also bought a fog machine which was the most expensive purchase of the festivities ($40 including fog juice). I LOVE it. In fact, I love it so much, I put that baby on every day for the week prior to the party. It was a magical time. |
To give it a science lab feel, I bought/borrowed a ton of painter's tarp from Home Depot ($8). For the space between the living/dining rooms, I splattered some with watered down dark red paint, cut them in strips, and hung them up. I put my red Christmas lights to good use by hot gluing them around the threshold (they came right off - just make sure you use low temp hot glue). My friend Richard and a marvelous idea to string up rope light on the ceiling of my living room and hang the remainder of the tarp over them. I loved this effect.
I left my TV on static. Easy way to bring in more creepy with stuff you already have laying around.
Mad Scientist Food and Drink
I was inspired by watching Martha's Halloween special and I couldn't bring myself to NOT have this awesome edible centerpiece at the party. I found this head at a garage sale (it is impossible to find styrofoam heads around Halloween) and took a knife to the top. I used my brain mold by placing it on the head to figure out exactly where to cut. With this
Shrimp Brain Recipe, I made me some brainz.
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| Wrap some gauze around where the brain and head meet for a realistic touch. |
I the cupcakes were from a box. I colored the icing pink and piped it into curlies for a cranial appearace. Not what I was expeting them to look like, so I covered them in
plastic roaches. It was delicious AND disgusting.
I made my party tablecloth look like a mad scientist work station by splattering it with watered down red paint and brought in
medical tongs for serving. For an added effect, I strung
disgusting/science-themed pictures I found on the internet avove the table, and put
christmas lights just under the sheet.
Fake mice were everywhere.
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| Books stacked at various levels under the sheet made for excellent pedistals. |
Where can you get these guys? I got my
test tubes from
Teacher Heaven. They were .80 cents each and even came with a twist-off cap (perfect for pinata filling!). These round
bulbous bottles I found at Hobby Lobby - also complete with a twist-off cap. A couple I filled with straight vodka/food coloring - others I put in a dash of orange juice.
Just make sure they're plastic, mmkay? 
Buy a
brain mold. Fill it with water and food coloring and let it freeze overnight. Pop it into a
glass ice tea dispenser and fill it with a fun colored cocktail. It will look like another one of your speicmen jars!
Games and Entertainment
This game is perfect for an adult party. It's straightforward and very easy. Have your guests tie a balloon to each foot and instruct them that the last person with a balloon at the end of the game wins. What do they win? As I was a Russian mad scientist, they got to have a shot of some slammin' vodka with the hostess.
It was the jam.
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| My lovely friend Chloe came my to help me make these pretties. |
There aren't any good eyeball pinatas out there. And I live in Texas (if you know your geography, that's right next to the leading country in the generation of pinatas). Not to mention, they're pricey. So we paper mache'd some balloons, covered them in bits of crepe paper and painted corneas onto them. We gave them a host of red veins for good measure ;)
Just make sure you attach them to a rope strong enough for a beating, or else you'll end up with a very short game of pinata...
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| We filled them with test tube shots and glow sticks. |
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Party Paparazzi
(click images for bigger view)
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