Chicken Wire Halloween Ghosts
4 Materials
$20
3 Hours
Medium
If you haven't seen the beautiful work of Derek Kinzett you should seriously check it out! He is a chicken wire sculptor and his pieces are AMAZING! This does not even begin to touch his work, however certainly was inspired by it. For a fun and spooky Halloween lawn ornament I made these chicken wire ghost dresses. All you do is mold and form some chicken wire into your desired shape and spray it with some glow in the dark spray paint for a ghastly figure.
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Supplies:
STEP 1: Measure your chicken wire for the torso of the figure. Mine measured 15" long and 36" across. Cut the wire out.
STEP 2: Roll your cut piece into a cylinder and twist the free wires together to hold it in place.
STEP 3: Now that the torso is simply a cylinder it is time to shape it into a bodily looking form. First I wanted to create a sweetheart neckline for the dress so I cut off the top of the torso to look like such. Then mold in the wire by pressing and bending and folding until you get the shape you are going for. I pressed in toward the waist to give the illusion of a chest and ribs and all.
STEP 4: After some bending and molding my torso looks pretty good to move along to the bottom. First measure the circumference of the bottom of the torso so you know how wide your waist needs to be for the bottom portion of your figure.
STEP 5: Cut out several almost triangular pieces for the skirt portion of the dress. Basically you will allow for a good portion of the top to connect to the waist of the torso, but will gradually get larger as you make your way down to add volume to the hem of the dress. For this you will just cut your wire at an angle all the way down until you have the desired length.
STEP 6: Connect your bottom pieces to the waist of your torso. Also hook each of the bottom pieces that you cut out together. You are really making a sort of funnel shape out of the wire you cut. *Sorry it is so hard to show this in photo form considering how crazy chicken wire can look)
STEP 7: Once I had all my pieces connected I thought some added straps might be a nice touch. I cut 2 small strips out of the wire first and folded all the poking wires in from the side. Then simply attach your straps to the bodice of the dress in the front and back on each side.
STEP 8: Now simply spray your completed dress with a glow-in-the-dark spray paint in white. This will allow your dress to glow at night.
When you set your dress in its desired location you will want to bend the bottom of the dress in and out in various spots to make it look like it is moving.
I decided to add the extra pieces I had cut out from making the bottom of the dress to make these floating looking tails to give it an extra illusion of motion, but it isn't necessary.
It is really hard to tell how this thing looks in person, but it really does look like an eerie figure is roaming around.
I took this girl all over the neighborhood... She's been floating around all day... I will try to snap a picture of her glowing at night and add it later if I can.
Comments
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2 of 90 comments
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This is the single most awesome project I've scene in a long time.. im totally going to try this...
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Wow!!!!!!!! Sooooo beautiful 😃
Frequently asked questions
Have a question about this project?
This is a great project. Does he by any chance make and sell these? In case there is someone who likes them but doesn't have the time or patience to do one?
I am not able to get mine to glow. I have painted it several times but no glow. Am I missing something?
what would it look like if you added soft LED LIGHTS