# Lucky 13 Carnival - 2015



## ThePirateHouse (Aug 9, 2009)

Love it all !! Great Job! Can't wait to see the rest!


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## talkingcatblues (Jan 30, 2009)

Wow! I love everything - the scarousel came out great, the lettering on the sign is gorgeous, the clown awning's teeth are perfectly horrible, and the lit up eyes are a really great & awful touch, and jack in the box looks pretty wild! Should be great fun for your guests. And happy almost anniversary!


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## lizzyborden (Sep 17, 2009)

I love it all, but those packing tape ponies really make the scarousel come to life!

Oh and happy anniversary!


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## Jenn&MattFromPA (Sep 4, 2013)

I love your façade! The clown/clown mouth turned our really awesome!


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## Spooky McWho (Jul 25, 2013)

Everything looks amazing! What a great party you are throwing. Happy Anniversary.


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## punkineater (Apr 26, 2014)

Congrats on lucky number 13!!!

Your props turned out amazing!


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## Frankie's Girl (Aug 27, 2007)

Thanks for the congrats on the anniversary everyone - it's a pretty nifty way to celebrate! 

The fun part is that most all of these are made from cardboard (clown mouth entrance, lucky 13 signage) or stuff I already had laying around fro previous prop builds (the circus striped flats are the walls of my crypt from many years ago, surface of the carousel is an old plastic picnic table) or things I scrounged for free (the box for the jack in the box along with many bits and pieces of wood and press board came from a house in the neighborhood throwing out all of their home-built decorations - they were moving and weren't doing their display any more). I also sourced craigslist's free section for things like pallets, paint and old fence boards to build other things like my ticket booth (not shown, but it's coming!)


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## Maranda Yates (Aug 9, 2015)

Looks great Frankie's girl! I'm so excited and ready to get my stuff up. Just need the hurricane to go away now!


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## 22606 (Aug 11, 2008)

Very nice.


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## xxScorpion64xx (Oct 15, 2011)

Really nice FG, it's looking awesome


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## offmymeds (May 26, 2010)

It all looks incredible and love that you used scrap stuff!


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## Frankie's Girl (Aug 27, 2007)

Zarko the Headless Clown - $20 costume, $15 mask (both from Oriental Trading), a mannequin I got years ago from craigslist (no darn stand and missing his left hand tho). Stuffed the mask with bags (lucky placement of a Target bullseye created a real eye in the mask hole!) and used an old gardening glove stuffed with newspaper and sewn onto the mask, then taped to the arm. Still need to put on his shoes but he's finished otherwise.


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## DaveintheGrave (Feb 12, 2004)

Looks fantastic, FG ! Your hard work really paid off, because everything looks amazing!


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## Frankie's Girl (Aug 27, 2007)

Aaaaand now for some more stuff. 

Some of our setup is having to be re-positioned or is not going out right now due to the fact that the weather is predicting thunderstorms from Wednesday - Saturday (with Saturday being the day of our party  ).









Ticket booth out but only 90% complete. Will be putting two white JoLs on the tops of the columns and a very large skull on the top center. And it is actually overlapping the position where the ghost pony scarousel is to sit (which is not going out until next weekend).










Skeletina, the Bony Beauty of the Highwire. She has a pink parasol that was intended to be used (a subtle nod to Disney's Haunted Mansion Tightrope walker) but with high winds possible, she's using a blue balance bar for now. 










Zombie Flamingos (part of the sideshow display)


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## talkingcatblues (Jan 30, 2009)

I like that the flamingos are working on removing the warning sign...


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## printersdevil (Sep 7, 2009)

Great job FrankiesGIrl. I love everything---especially Skeletina! Great fun!


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## moony_1 (Sep 25, 2009)

Wow! I love it! I wish we had more time to build this year! I may try to steal some of your ideas foe another time haha. Love everything!


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## StaceyLynn (Oct 14, 2012)

Wow, amazing! Happy anniversary!


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## Paint It Black (Sep 15, 2011)

Great stuff! I love the way everything is turning out. The "Caution - We bite" sign cracked me up. LOL


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## Zombiegrl (Sep 8, 2014)

First - Happy Anniversary! I hope you guys have a wonderful day! ..... Also this is coming along fabulously! Everything is incredible....


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## vampyrespro (Dec 29, 2011)

Wow! Very impressive and inspiring! Makes me want to get to work on my carnival theme for next year!


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## Ween12amEternal (Apr 15, 2006)

Argh - clowns! But it looks great, can't wait to see it lit up. Enjoy the happiest of anniversaries!


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## Frankie's Girl (Aug 27, 2007)

Thanks all! 

I'm kind of sad, tho, as the weather is definitely not cooperating. We're now facing around 70% chance of thunderstorms and heavy rain for the day of our party (24th) and figuring the rain is going to stay around through Halloween! 

Which means the clown entrance, my jack in the box and several other planned props won't be happening. For our party, we had planned three games, and I have the midway game booth structure for them built, but still needing the striped walls tacked on... but there's no point if I can't use our backyard! I may put the clown mouth entrance over our buffet area (and remove the zebra curtained concessions decoration - I think it's in my album), the ghost pony carousel will have to squeeze into a corner of our living room, and several other adjustments must be made for the party. AND that also means that we may lose guests that don't feel like getting out on a stormy night too. Also, I can't put out some of those props at all for Halloween night if it's raining heavily, so the weather may ruin both our party and the big night too.


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## matrixmom (Oct 29, 2010)

Well you have done it for me Frankies Girl..!!.the fam wants to do clowns/carnevil. next year. Any quick how to's on your big clown mouth? Foam or cardboard?
Love all your props, sorry to hear about the weather. But most of our guests really come for the party don't they? They love the decor but they are not obsessed like we all are here!!


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## Frankie's Girl (Aug 27, 2007)

matrixmom said:


> Well you have done it for me Frankies Girl..!!.the fam wants to do clowns/carnevil. next year. Any quick how to's on your big clown mouth? Foam or cardboard?
> Love all your props, sorry to hear about the weather. But most of our guests really come for the party don't they? They love the decor but they are not obsessed like we all are here!!



Just a word of warning: the circus/carnival theme can be addictive! 

I did my clown mouth with giant pieces of cardboard, reinforced the top part with a wood support piece, and attached the whole thing to a cheapo dark green metal garden arch left over from our wedding (!) and then planned to stake it into the ground and tie some guide wires to the tree next to it to make it really secure... now it is definitely going in our dining room nook, so will be nailing some support wires into the nearby cabinet and wall, but should still look pretty nifty. If you have little wind, then I would think foamcore (weighted down and reinforced with 1x2s maybe?) might be okay, but it could also get destroyed if you have any really windy conditions. 

If I had the proper tools I would have built it out of think plywood/particle board and not have to worry about the stupid weather, but I am still learning and realized too late I needed a jigsaw and a whole lot more practice so maybe next year I'll step up to real tools and working with wood properly. 

I made the upper part in one half piece using scrap cardboard, traced it out on one side, and then flipped it to make sure it mirrored itself. Same for the sides - cut out one first, then used it as a template for the other side so it looked exactly the same. Slotted it all together (advantage with cardboard - I made big slot/tabs to attach the sides to the top) and then tied it all on using a combo of fishing line and twine. Then attached the support strut (I screwed in through the face into the backside where the wood support was using a large washer to help prevent the screws from just popping through, which I then painted over to hide). I drilled holes in the wood supports (I have one section of 1x2 leading from the forehead of the clown down to the top of the garden arch) and tied it securely to the arch using twine.

I'll try to take some build pics so it might be clearer, but honestly you can probably figure out a better way to do this that is more secure.


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## Zombiegrl (Sep 8, 2014)

Sorry to hear about the weather also..... we are all sending good joujou that the weather clears up for you in time to have the party outside....


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## DaveintheGrave (Feb 12, 2004)

Sorry about your weather woes, FG. Maybe you'll get lucky and it will change for the better.
I hope so!


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## The Halloween Lady (Jul 17, 2010)

Frankie, everything looks just super!


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## Frankie's Girl (Aug 27, 2007)

Just had to move our party from the 24th to the 30th due to horrific weather. Apparently there's a massive (like largest they've seen ever) hurricane about to hit the west Mexican coast, and heading straight for SE Texas, where we already have two other heavy rain fronts barreling at us. And they'll all converge on SE Texas... Saturday night, the night of our party. 

So we've changed to Friday, the 30th, but we've already had two peeps say they can't make that date since they had plans already - which I totally expected, and I actually expect more "no" votes too. But just couldn't stay with the date being tomorrow as we're estimated to get widespread flooding and up to 6-14 inches of rain within a 48 hour period and that is catastrophic conditions and I would expect no one would show up anyway and if they did, they might get stuck or even worse. \

BUT that means we have a bit more time to set up more things and maybe just maybe the night of the 30th won't be crappy weather-wise and we can put out everything we originally planned. Fingers crossed anyway.

And I do find it quite ironic that it is our "lucky" number 13 party that is having epic weather conditions leading to party cancellation/move. Gotta take the humor where I can get it!


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## The Red Hallows (Sep 21, 2009)

This post makes me so incredibly happy. We are doing the clown theme next year. I'm nervous but excited. Everything looks great.


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## Frankie's Girl (Aug 27, 2007)

Finally got around to some setup pics from Halloween. Was lucky that the epic rains and thunderstorm broke by 3pm and we got over 150 TOTs. Even though we had to rush the setup and hadn't had time to do much in the way of lighting and missed putting up our clown mouth for the photo op (among other things), we got tons of compliments. 


So the games from our party:









We had to wait until much later to let the striped backdrop down as the wind/rain was crazy for hours! 










BasketCase - timed game using a beachball trying to make it past the clown point guard).










Zombie BBQ - using an old grill, a string of flicker lights, and a specially cut out "Z" zombie zone grill (cut from cardboard, secured using fishing wire). Each player gets three hands and needs to land 90% or better into the zombie zone. This was a fun game!



















The Dead Duck - got the ducks and the coffin-shaped inflatable from Oriental trading. Filled it with water, used black duct tape to make tiny "X" over the ducks' eyes and used submersible lights. Ducks had the typical numbers on the bottom and matched up with the buckets for little prizes.










How we ended up using the Clown Entrance (for the party)










Serena from Grandin Road as Spidora the Spider Lady










Zarco the headless clown









Skeletina, the bony beauty of the highwire



I had really cool signage for each of the sideshow performers, but couldn't use it since it wasn't waterproof. 


And a quick and jerky video of the basic setup (I always forget to take better pics/videos until too late):


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## xxScorpion64xx (Oct 15, 2011)

Very nice FG, sorry to hear that you weren't able to set everything up but it still looks good, really like the ghost pony carousel


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## ThePirateHouse (Aug 9, 2009)

Turned out Spooktacularly! Loved the scarousel.


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## StanFam3 (Oct 5, 2009)

First off, HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!

Secondly, great haunt!!! We want to do a side-show/carnival type haunt next year. Loved your games!

Great work!


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## Blades006 (Sep 18, 2015)

Happy 13!!!!

Nice haunt!! We're thinking of adding a carnevil theme for next year and we really like your scary-go-round  Many other great ideas here too!


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## DaveintheGrave (Feb 12, 2004)

Love the pictures! And all the games are so original. I think I like the dead duck game best. And great idea using the inflatable coffin.

Looks like a lot of fun!


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## jdubbya (Oct 4, 2003)

Love this! We also did a carnival theme and seeing yours, would have loved to come up with some of your ideas! Everything looks just great!


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## Dr. Jitters (Nov 6, 2015)

Really excellent! Skeletina is a nice humorous touch.  Spider Lady and the ticket booth are great, too.


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## Zombiegrl (Sep 8, 2014)

WOW! everything came out amazing!! Especially loved the ghost pony carousel ..... fantastic!!! ..... will definitely have to steal the idea if I can ever concentrate on decorating outside as much as I do inside!!


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## Paint It Black (Sep 15, 2011)

Great job on everything. I thought your games were especially well done!


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## Muffy (Sep 25, 2006)

Hey Hey FG........you did a terrific job here. I was looking at the last set of pictures thinking OMG the work. It just sucks to have to trust Mother Nature, she can be really awful sometimes. For those of us that do a lot of decorating outside we always have to have some backup plans.Everything looked great and I agree with the others here....what original ideas for the games, I loved them! 

Congratulations on the Anniversary!


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## talkingcatblues (Jan 30, 2009)

Love the dead ducks floating in the coffin and scary clown basketball hoop. And your spider woman came out beyond great - what a centerpiece. Plus the jack in the box and the already awesome carousel... Even if the weather meant your stuff had to come out in stages, or quickly rehome itself, like the clown arch - looks terrific there too, btw - it still rocked. So, a true three-ring circus - bunch of acts, lot of chaos and some improv? But all together really fantastic and fun.


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## Attic Hatch (Sep 12, 2015)

Really great! 
Especially like the "Spiderina" and the Carousel!
Consider doing the "ghost treatment" with the flamingos? - that could be funl!


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