Halloween Hot Sauce

My previous business, Haunted Hot Sauce has died, its been buried and has now clawed its way back from the grave as Halloween Hot Sauce! Do you like Halloween? Do like hot sauce? Then you'll LOVE Halloween Hot Sauce!

Halloween Hot Sauce creates flavorful, high-quality hot sauce for Halloween...or anytime! Each hot sauce is wrapped in a creepy, vintage, apothecary-style label and comes topped with a scrap of “burial cloth” that’s been securely attached with a toe-tag!

It's a decoration! It's a delicious hot sauce! It's perfect for Halloween parties!

Halloween Hot Sauce...the OFFICIAL hot sauce of Halloween! You think that's a bold claim? See for yourself at HalloweenHotSauce.com!

Is your Mort Safe?

I learned recently that bars, stones and fences were installed on top of and around ancient grave-sites in order to protect deceased loved ones from grave robbers. These were called MORTSAFES!

A Google image search for mortsafe yields astounding results!

I'd LOVE to make one of these!

Here's the iron bar variety

How about an iron coffin!?

And here's a full-blown cage!

Many, many more pics and Halloween decorating ideas here! ( http://tinyurl.com/97l2oph )

Haunted Hot Sauce Halloween 2011

Just a few days shots of my small display this year. More than quantity, this year was about lighting and ambiance.

Click Here to see the photos.

Or Click Here to see the fancy slideshow.

OUTSIDE: The entire house was illuminated by three blue spotlights hidden in the trees.

INSIDE: Red spotlights shone through the boarded windows which made the house scream "EEEEEVIL!" I didn't have time to detail the Styrofoam "boards" but that made no difference at night as they appeared as silhouettes when lit from behind.




WITCH JARS: I made a dozen of these quickly the night before Halloween. Hung at varying heights from the huge Magnolia tree and lit with tea lights, they were VERY effective in creating interest, movement, contrast and a ghostly atmosphere.




THE COFFIN UNDER THE STAIRS: Illuminated by a hidden red spotlight from above, inside this coffin is where I hid one of those sound activated "haunted hedge" shakers. Everyone that approached it was greeted by a violent shaking, rattling sound and guttural growls coming from within the coffin. My fog machine dispersed thick fog from under this coffin at regular intervals.



I actually got to hide in here for a while to scare trick-or-treaters.


THE CEMETERY: Each tombstone was illuminated by a blue/green LED light "expertly" duct taped to a spray-painted black paint stirrer stick and shoved into the ground in front of the tombstone. A few had LED candles and others had oil lanterns hanging from them.



One of my only "night shots".




The same shot the morning after.




The wilted and faded cemetery flower urns I made can be found elsewhere in my blog.




I realize that the inside of this coffin looks too "new" but at night, illuminated by the flickering oil lamp, that goes unnoticed.


SUMMARY: This year's display was creepy and beautiful. Red light streaming through the boarded windows, blue light illuminating the entire house, each tombstone illuminated by it's own blue/green light, flickering candles and oil lamp flames and glowing witch jars swaying in the slight breeze. Haunted organ music, crows and the moans of restless undead souls were heard.

I'll use the lighting tricks I learned along with much greater detail for next year so keep an "eye out" for Moonlit Hill Cemetery - Halloween 2012!


Click Here to see a few more shots!

It's corpsin' time!

I'm working on a half-corpse to possibly carry in the upcoming Dragon*Con parade on Labor Day weekend. She'll "interact" with the crowd and others throughout the day.

Making Zombie Arms

Tonight I'm making prop zombie arms out of bended pvc pipes to go with the zombie hands I made last year.


Two 9" pieces of pvc pipe.



Curved slightly by heating them up with a heat gun.



Holes drilled into the ends.



Fastened with zip ties.



Zip tie ends stuck into the open end of the pvc pipe and everything taped down with duct tape.

Next I'll coat the arms with construction adhesive (like liquid nails), stain them and give them a little touch up paint.

Halloween Cemetery Fence Reference

On a recent trip to the cemetery to shoot some product shots for HauntedHotSauce.com, I stumbled upon the following:



I was AMAZED! This is the cemetery of my Halloween dreams!!!! I shot detailed photos of 2 or 3 fenced in areas. I WILL recreate one of these areas for my home haunt this year!



View all of these photos HERE!

Spider web at last!

Instead of doing the smart thing and buying one of those cool spider web guns like those available at www.minionsweb.com, I tried to make one. I tried on and off for almost 2 years with no success...and went through more that a few glue guns in the process. Maybe you'll have better luck with this method than I did.

But this year...SUCCESS! (and you won't believe how.)

All I did was squirt glue from the glue gun and hit the stream of glue with my compressor nozzle set at about 70 psi! I used the nozzle made for filling up inflatable rafts, etc.

That's it! No dismantling of the glue gun and no fittings to find and assemble!

It's a two handed method though...holding the plugged in glue gun in one hand and spraying the stream about an inch below where it exits the glue gun with the compressor nozzle with the other hand. It takes a little practice.

Depending on the wattage of your glue gun, you can spray for a few minutes before you have to let the glue heat up again. And it helps to be holding the glue gun level horizontally or down. If you try to spray "up", the glue falls back onto the gun (and your hand! Ouch!) Just get on a ladder for higher areas and spray down.

Here are a couple shots of my results.









You'll want to save this method for outdoors or the garage too because...well....you're spraying glue! You can spray a prop outdoors and just bring it inside when it's cooled.

As always...if you have any questions, just let me know in the comments or email me: TheUndertaker@HauntedHotSauce.com.

Halloween 2010 photos

CLICK HERE to see HauntedHotSauce.com's Halloween 2010 Flickr photo gallery

Or here's a fancy slideshow!

And below are a few "teaser" photos. I'll probably add a few more to this set soon. If you have ANY questions about ANYTHING, please feel free to comment or email me at: TheUndertaker@HauntedHotSauce.com.

Zombie Heads and Hands

...anxiously await staining.

Styrofoam Zombie Heads: Teeth

Today I added teeth and gums to my Styrofoam zombie heads. Next step? ROTTING FLESH!!!

Makin' Styrofoam Zombie Heads

This past weekend I've been carving zombie heads from Styrofoam wig heads using a Dremel tool. It take about 30 minutes...and keep the Shop-Vac on the entire time unless you want your work area to look like the blizzard of 2010! I bought the wig heads for $9.99 each at Hobby Lobby.



Next to glue on the teeth!

I learned this technique from the EXCELLENT "Make Your Own Scratch Built Corpse" DVD available for only $15.00 at monstercloset.com GET IT!

Corpse head

Here's the head to one of many corpses I'll be bulding over the next couple weeks. Made from a styrofoam wig head, construction adhesive, hot glue for fabrics and paint.

Zombie Heads at Halloween City

Just a sample of the great stuff at the Halloween City store in Kennesaw, GA. [Map]

Making Funeral Flowers

During a recent trip to a cemetery I noticed how much atmosphere the flowers left for the deceased add to it. Real flowers die and turn brown quickly while artificial arrangements wilt and fade in the sun.

I decided to try and capture a bit of this atmosphere in my own Halloween cemetery. I went to the Dollar Tree store and purchased about 15 bunches of artificial flowers at $1.00 each. [photo] Big Lots provided four $3.00 plastic urns.

Using a heat gun, I blasted the flower arrangements causing them to wilt. Then I lightly spray painted the tops of the blossoms and leaves with a flat light tan color [photo] to try and create a faded look on the colored flowers and a dusty look on the white flowers.

The results are below. The photos really don't do it justice but all-in-all I think it's pretty successful. I still have to weather the urns in the photos below.











A coating of spider web and some interesting lighting and I think these arrangements will add to the creepy atmosphere of my cemetery...or of my casket viewing area. What do you think?

UNDEAD Pale Ale

I stumbled across a t-shirt design displaying a label very similar to this one. The t-shirt design said "POSTHUMOUS PALE ALE" and I'll admit to you that I had to look up the word posthumous (AFTER DEATH) to get it. So...I changed the name to something that simpletons like me can understand. I'll print out a bunch of these and stick them onto bottles of Pale Ale for my Halloween party.

note: original "posthumous pale ale" design by Blair Sayer.

Embalming Room Sign

My Halloween party "EMBALMING ROOM" sign almost ready for paint. I'm going to cut rounded grooves from the corners and put faux bolt hex heads there too. More to come.

That time of year...

Halloween merchandise is starting to appear in Target stores. In my opinion they usually have a pretty impressive selection. I'll be visiting them daily til just before Halloween.



A green tombstone? I think it works! (also available, pink and blue for your zombie-themed baby showers)



This bat tombstone is elaborate and just plain cool! Nice job Target!

Retro Halloween Glow Skull

I love these old decorations. I still have this one.
You can get it and a few others HERE.

Skeletons at Garden Ridge!!

Well, the Halloween season has officially begun! Among other things, Garden Ridge has life-sized, realistic, rigid plastic skeletons for only $49.99! Get 'em while they're DEAD!!