If you are looking for a fun family craft project that can make an appearance from year to year you may want to make this “Front Lawn Frankenstein”. While the project requires some group effort, with care the results can last from year to year. Working as a group this project will take about two to three hours. Halloween lovers will go absolutely mad over this huge Frankenstein’s monster ingeniously crafted from a picnic table. Just stand him up in your yard or driveway and hope for lightning to bring him to life!
What you will need:
Wooden picnic table with stand-alone benches
Green plastic rectangular tablecloth (most tables need one that is 54 inches by 108 inches)
Staple gun or upholstery tacks
Black all-purpose polyethylene sheeting (found in most hardware/garden stores)
Scissors
Purple acrylic paint
Two 6-inch Styrofoam balls
White or yellow glow-in-the-dark acrylic paint
2 foil pie pans, 8 3/4-inch diameter
Pushpins
4 lengths of 20-gauge, 18-inch floral wire
Duct tape
White glue
3 large sheets of green craft foam
Roll of 3/4-inch-wide black electrical tape
4 white foam egg cartons
Roll of 1 1/4-inch-wide red plastic tape
1 large sheet of red craft foam
Two 5-quart paper paint buckets (found in hardware stores)
Aluminum foil
Instructions for the project: For the skin of your monster wrap the tablecloth tightly around the tabletop, then staple or tack the edges to the underside. Stand the table on end. You may need to steady it for safety (an adult’job) by securing it with ropes or propping it up against something solid like a tree, so there’s no chance of it tipping over. For the monster’hair, measure and cut 3 sheets of black plastic that are 12 inches wider than the table and half as long as the table. Fold the plastic in half over one end of the table then staple down the hair on the back and sides of the table. Finish the hair by trimming the plastic into three layers of jagged bangs, making the top layer the shortest and the two layers beneath progressively longer. For the eyes of the monster, paint a purple iris on each Styrofoam eyeball. When the paint is completely dry, coat the entire eyeball (including the iris) with the glow-in-the-dark paint. Set aside the eyes to dry. Use a pushpin to punch a hole through the center of each pie pan. For each eye, hold two lengths of floral wire together and fold them in half. Twist them together and use the wire threaded through the pie pans to attach to the Styrofoam iris eyeballs. Once the purple irises are attached to the pie pan staple them to the table. For the eyes and nose of the monster cut two simple ears and a nose from the green foam sheets. For the ears, make tabs by cutting 2 slits on the side that will attach to the table. Attach the ears by folding the tabs in opposite directions around the edge of the table and stapling them in place. You can then attach the nose with staples or tacks. For the mouth of the monster lay strips of black tape between the egg cups. Cover the sides and top of the carton completely with red tape. You can then use more red tape to connect the cartons end-to-end to form two pairs of teeth. Cut a long tongue from the red craft foam and attach it to the table with one staple or tack where the mouth will be placed. The tongue should flop forward and stick out. Be sure that you plan to position the egg cartons so that two are above the tongue and two are below, with the bottoms of the cartons touching. You can then attach the cartons by opening each one and stapling from the inside, attaching the back hinges to the picnic table. To add the neck bolts cover both paint buckets with aluminum foil. Then you can attach them, open ends pointing out, to the bottom corners of the table by stapling each bucket from the inside. For a finishing touch add scars to your monster’face using the black tape. For an extra scary touch, shine an outdoor light on the monster’s face.
