Since last year everyone was impressed with my
Toy Story trunk-or-treat theme, I had to up my game when it came to this year's trunk-or-treat at Michael's school. I knew that whatever I did, it wasn't going to work with my trunk. My brother was awesome enough and let me borrow his SUV. I knew that the theme had to be Peanuts. Here's how Jon and I pulled it off:
I found this tv box in someone's trash and thought that it would be great to make the Peanut characters out of. What? You've never picked perfectly good stuff out of someone's trash? You'd be surprised at some of things you'll find in people's trash in my neighborhood!
Jon broke the box down and I began to sketch out the characters. We decided on making Charlie Brown, Linus, Lucy, and Sally. I pulled up pictures of each of the characters from the internet on my phone and began sketching them out.
If you feel that you're not able to draw the characters out, the size of the characters are around 23 inches tall and 11 inches wide. This way if you would rather print out a picture and then glue them to the cardboard, you can.
Jon cut each character out for me. We made it so that there was extra cardboard at the bottom to use as a stand, about 6 inches. Once the characters were cut out, Jon made a score line with the exactor knife below the feet.
He then bent the cardboard where the score line was. His plan was to make it so each character would be self standing. I'll show you that later.
We then used a white primer on each character to provide adhesion and a base coat to provide proper color reproduction.
Here's the paints that we ended up using for all of the characters. I put about 2 - 3 coats of each on each character.
Once the primer was dry, Jon began drawing the rest of the characters so that I knew where and what to color. I got a little carried away with Linus' red shirt.
Once I was done with all the painting, Jon went through and painted all the outlines and details on each character. Did I mention that he's a painter? He's got much more patience with this type of painting than I do.
Once the characters were dry, Jon took some extra cardboard and glued it to the center of the body and the base of each one. This is how the characters can be free standing.
The night before, Jon and I did a little trial test fit to figure out how to set certain things up. Jon also made a "Welcome Great Pumpkin" sign with some white poster board and a wooden rod we already had. He also made a moon out of yellow construction paper. We layed some green felt that Jon had made for his 40K gaming table on the bed of the trunk to give the appearance of grass.
Several of the pumpkins were real pumpkins and a few were the fake kind that you can carve. I had bought some vines from Jo-Ann Fabrics to help give the feel of it being a pumpkin patch. Linus' blue blanket was one of Michael's blankies. I just draped it over one of Linus' hands.
I had also purchased some Fall looking fake leaves from Walmart and just layed them over the green felt. We had decided not to make a Snoopy, but rather used Michael's stuffed Snoopy.
The backdrop was originally going to be black poster board, but we couldn't figure out the best way to get it to stand up. Jon also had this grayish felt, also made for his 40K gaming table, that we decided to use instead. It worked so much better. On one side of the SUV, one of the seat belts comes from the ceiling so we stuffed part of the cloth in that.
The other side is where Michael's car seat was hooked into the ceiling. I took a safety pin to hold it in place on that side of the SUV. I took a straight pin to pin the moon to the gray felt backdrop.
All ready for the cute little trunk-or-treaters at Michael's preschool. Good thing this is Michael's last year of preschool. I don't know how I can up my game any more!
Oh, and I held all these treats in the awesome Peanuts Halloween bag that I found at Walmart.
Michael decided that he wanted to be Pac Man this year. I tried to get him to dress up as Linus, but he wanted to be Pac Man.
2 comments
I will in down south again this Oct and will be doing another trunk or treat with my cousin,so was looking for theme.We r good at crafts so I wanted to do Peanuts and Gang.Love your handmade one since we like to do all handmade crafts.Will do similiar as you did for her grandson.Thx for the GREAT idea.U did a wonderful job.There's always things around the house to use and there is much free cardboard to be found. Paula
ReplyDeleteGlad you liked it. We still use the figures every Halloween in our front yard for Trick-or-Treat and sometimes for Christmas in our front window.
Delete