Nightmare Before Christmas: Life Size Jack the Pumpkin King

What's This?

My Halloween project this year.

What's This?

A life size Jack Skellington.

You may remember how we really like Nightmare Before Christmas at our house.

Like my son's Jack tee shirt, or my painting.

But this year my son and I busted out all the stops and  made our own Jack to greet our friends on our porch this Halloween.  It all started with my watching the special features on the DVD and really wanting my own Jack Skellington in our Hallween decor.  I paid close attention to his proportions, clothing, and details to hopefully end up with a good depiction of the original character.  

I'd hope Tim Burton might approve of my rendition.

Let me introduce you to him:

He's over 6 feet tall, but he can't stand on his own unfortunately.

All his joints are movable in his arms, legs, and each little finger.

He's waterproof to live outside on the porch.

He cost us $15.00 (he's made with a lot of our left overs from other junk)

Jack likes to lounge around and enjoy a book, 

Take a break to chat with friends,

Play a little piano,

Sneak in some video games,

Lounge in the sun with a cold drink,

Potty Break,

Finish his day with a cup of hot chocolate. 

Happy Halloween!!

Of course I'll show you how we made our Jack so you can make one if you think this isn't too creepy.

For a few days he's just sat in our armchair in our front room.  

I kind of forget he's there, so when my friends/ neighbors have popped in and his white creepy face is smiling at them as they come in it's been fun to see different reactions.  

To see how RJ and I made Jack Skellington

 {with free pattern for bat wing bow-tie}

CLICK HERE

To start off, the basic components of Jack's body are a solid wood "spine" with paper mache clay coating for the chest and head.
Arms, legs, and hands are wire, with paper mache clay finger bones.
Clothes were hot glued on.

After the overview, we'll break it down.

1. Paper Mache Body

For the spine to support the body, I bought a 1" dowel.   I trimmed up a scrap 4x4 hunk for the pelvis and with a spade drill bit, made the 1" hole for the dowel to go in, using wood glue to secure it.

Next I built his chest and head with newspaper, masking and duct tape, and finished it off with floral wire to give the paper mache clay something to hold on to.

I used this recipe for paper mache clay.  This stuff is awesome and dries fast and rock hard.

**Things to know about the clay.  You can find linseed oil in a hardware store next to mineral spirits or paint thinner in the paint department.  Joint compound is by the spackle in the same paint department.

To make the toilet paper for the clay a finer pulp, I would tear it in hunks and fill my blender half full of toilet paper, then fill it 3/4 full of warm water and frappe.  After all the toilet paper was churned to a milky pulp, I'd dump it in a mesh strainer and sqeeze the water out, then followed the clay recipe from there.****

ADJUST HEAD

I let my first clay dry overnight and realized I had an oval shaped human head and needed it more spherical like the character.  So I just added more newspaper in the areas I needed to beef up and also added more depth for eyes and a nose shape.  Then the second head coat of clay went on.  For my second batch I used my blender first as mentioned above, and the clay was much smoother.  You can work with it as you would regular clay, smoothing it with water as you go.  It's pretty awesome stuff.

2. Make Hands

  For the hands, I wanted to be able to shape the fingers, making him really come to life.  So I took 14 guage wire and duct taped 5 pieces (approx 20" long each) to a cardboard "wrist".  Then I used the newspaper/ masking tape/ floral wire to coat the wrist.  For each finger bone, it was just beefed up messy masking tape and floral wire.

Then I just applied the thin coat (1/8" to 1/4") of paper mache clay around each bone.

3. Paint

I used exterior white paint for his head and fingers.  The black was latex paint I had, but I'm sure regular cheap craft paint would be fine.  Because Jack is going on our porch as Halloween decorations, I also painted a layer of outdoor polyurethane on him to further seal all the mache.

4. Add Arm and Leg Wire

The wire for the arms and legs are super thick wire.  I don't know the gauge, but I bought it at Home Depot in the fencing section.  It's too thick to cut with wire cutters, so I had to use a hack saw.

The arms are one long wire 60" long, and the legs are a single wire long 100" long.

I drilled through the pelvis with a 3/8" drill bit, and threaded the leg wire through.

I didn't drill through the 1" dowel, because I was drilling blind into the body.  If I made another one, I would have drilled before adding all the mache and put a thick straw through the hole in the dowel to build the body around it.  But for this first guy, I just drilled into each shoulder only through the mache layer, then just jabbed my arm wire through in front of the dowel spine and out the other shoulder hole.

5. Add Sleeves and Pants

Before you put his huge hands on, you have to dress the limbs.

I just cut strips of fabric 3" wide and sewed up one side.  To turn such a long skinny tube right side out, I used a safety pin.  Only pinning it to one layer, you can turn the safety pin down the tube, and work it's way all the way to the other end, coming out and having your tube turned right side out.

I just hot glued the long sleeve tubes to the body. 

6. Attach Hands

Now with the sleeves/ pants on you can hoist them up.  I just twisted the finger wires up the arm, around each other.  To keep the wires a little tighter, I covered the twisted wire arm with duct tape.

 

7. Glue on Suit

For the rest of his suit, I just glued it onto the body.  First I used a scrap of white satin to glue on his chest for the shirt.  Then I just took strips of the striped fabric and glued it around in hunks for the jacket.  I tried to match up the pinstripes, but it didn't always work out.

I did sew tails for his jacket, basically with 2 pieces of fabric, I sewed a "w" shape to give two pointed tails.  I then turned it right side out and hot glued it on his back with the tails dangling.

8. Bat Wing Bow-tie

The bow-tie uses wires to make it scrunch creepily.  

Click HERE to print my basic bat wing bow-tie pattern.

I made the bow tie in two halves.  Each half has two pieces of fabric, each with fusible interfacing ironed on the back.  

To make the bow tie easier to shape, I next sewed floral wire to the edge of each piece using a zig zag stitch.  The wire was sewn on the back, so when I put two together, the interfacing and wires were in the middle of the sandwich where you couldn't see them.  

To connect the two layers, I just zig zagged around the edges once they were layered with wrong sides together.

To attach my finished bat wings to his neck, once again I just used a bunch of hot glue.

9. Boots

He has really tiny little boots.  I thought about getting little baby dress shoes from the thrift store, but just hacked out little wood boots from scrap 2x4 hunks instead.  I drilled a hole in the top of the shoe to glue the leg wires into and painted them black.

Then Jack is finished and you can enjoy a creepy Halloween! 

To position him outside he'll be sitting in a chair with floral wire around his neck and fastened to the back of the chair to keep his head upright.

It was kind of a long project, especially with the overnight drying time for all the paper mache clay, but we made it a little bit at a time, so it took a while.  It was so fun and we've had a blast hanging out with Jack since.  I think maybe next year I'll make him Sally to sit next to him....then they could hold hands.

And if you're wondering, I still haven't figured out how I'm going to store him after Halloween...my husband is still waiting for an answer on that one.

Happy Halloween!