tree branches from the black lagoon

I am an avid recycler. Especially when it concerns Halloween props. Any opportunity to take the remnants of Halloweens past and find a place for them within a new project is always welcome. So while working on my Halloween tree, I began to contemplate which, if any, of last Halloween's detritus might prove useful.

And then, inspiration struck. Or so I believed. I had several wire hands carefully packed away which had served me well last October. One had been part of my costume and the others, the skeletal hands of graveyard mourners.

Why not give their lives new meaning, I thought. Why not use these mangled, wiry hands to extend the branches of my still-evolving Halloween tree? Each branch would extend, and finally terminate, in a grasping, hand-like form.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. I was really quite impressed with myself. The reality, however, was not nearly as impressive.

The hands were attached to the ends of the wire-and-foam branches. The entire branch structure was then wrapped in cheesecloth that had been dyed black and dipped in a glue and water mix. And left to dry. Where it eventually transformed into . . . the tree branch from the black lagoon.




The cheesecloth-covered hands did not resemble the long spindly ends of dead tree branches so much as the limbs of a decaying tar pit monster. Some minor surgery on the stiffened cheesecloth around the fingers helped, but it didn't do enough to alter my original opinion. The hands/branches would have to go.

The amputation is scheduled for later today.