Frankenstein's Lab Bookcase Ready For Painting

Got the backing board installed on the bookcase prop yesterday so all that's left to do is painting. Other than the painting of the bookcase and the updated pedestals, we're pretty much ready for haunt setup on Halloween as far as prop making goes. The bookcase was definitely a trickier prop build than expected. The throne prop build last year was surprisingly easier in comparison. The bookcase is 83" tall, by 22" wide and is designed to fit precisely in the back corner of our porch between the garage wall and front door. The shelves are 9.25" deep. We have an old antique jelly jar cupboard that we used on our front porch for Halloween way back in 2013, but the shelf heights aren't tall enough nor are the shelves deep enough for Frankenstein's laboratory type props. And as of 2020, we started blocking off the front porch using what we call our "social distancing" barricade/treat serving table. It turned out that not having trick-or-treaters come right up to the front door on our porch prevented "traffic jams" and gave us more display space, so the barricade has now become an "Every Halloween" prop. So placing a bookcase against the garage side wall wasn't going to work with the current porch haunt setup, so we had to come up with a custom solution.

Halloween Candy 2022 Update

One of our favorite Halloween treats for ourselves were the Nestle Butterfinger Peanut Butter Skulls. They came out around Halloween 2016 and we bought a bag of them as emergency trick-or-treat candy reserves. We gave them a try and loved them. Thought they were even better than a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. We made an effort to find and buy them each Halloween thereafter but to our dismay they were discontinued a few years ago. However one of our local stores had started putting out Halloween candy this past week and we spotted "Butterfinger Skulls" in the mix. Hurray, the current Butterfinger parent company brought them back! Well so we thought. We didn't read the label very carefully, these are not Butterfinger "Peanut Butter Cup" Skulls, these are "Milk Chocolate With Butterfinger Pieces" Skulls. The chocolate center came across more like a chocolate fudge than say solid milk chocolate, so these are too sweet for our taste and won't be making the cut as a trick-or-treat candy option this Halloween.

Lighting Apparatus Prop

The "Lightning Apparatus" that will go on a shelf of the Frankenstein's Lab Bookcase on our front porch for Halloween is 99% completed. We're using a couple of our battery powered LED flame sconce lights to backlight the control panel. They looked better than the LED puck lights. Their flicker effect looks like power surges in person. We built the upper frame to house an 8" Android tablet PC, with the decorative trim hiding all but the tablet's screen. We're just waiting on a bag of assorted black rubber bands from Amazon. A rubber band across the back connected to some small screws should keep the tablet snug against the frame, but allow for easy removal for recharging the tablet. Once again, the tablet will be looping an animated graphics lightning bolt video. We'll save what that looks like for the haunt photos on Halloween.

More Lab Props Completed

Finished building and painting the apothecary jar light risers for the Frankenstein's lab bookcase prop along with applying some vintage looking chemical labels to a pair of amber glass bottles. Last bookcase prop build we still have to do is the "Lightning Apparatus" which will be rather unique looking. With that we should have enough props to fill up the bookcase nicely.

Frankenstein's Monster Gets A Done Stamp!

Other than for a pants waist height adjustment, our standing Frankenstein's Monster prop is completed. The prop will be standing behind our custom built porch barricade just like the fortune teller prop did in 2020 and the devil prop did last year, so most of the legs portion of the mannequin will be hidden from view anyway. $18 total for the pants, long sleeved green t-shirt, and blazer at Goodwill.

Frankenstein's Lab Bookcase Progress

103 days until Halloween. Almost done building the bookcase prop for our porch. Needs the 1/4 inch backing board installed and then comes painting.

Apothecary Jar Light Riser Prop

Built the first of four wooden light risers for our apothecary jar props that will go on the Frankenstein's Lab bookcase prop. The risers will be spray painted different antique metal colors. We'll also try to mix up the decorative trim on them so they all look slightly different.