The "Official" 2023 Yard Haunt Photos

We got the "official" 2023 Halloween yard haunt photos up on Flickr, but keep following our Instagram for more photos from this year haunt to drop over the upcoming days/weeks.

Spirit Halloween Creepy Dolls 2023

After the spray paint debacle with the soft vinyl dolls, we found these two creepy dolls on Spirit Halloween's website that appear to be new for 2023. This is precisely the paint effect we were going for with the other dolls. These two dolls fit the bill and will display nicely in the swamp witch's cupboard on Halloween. Done stamp!

Painting Mistakes Part 3

Discovered that the online baking soda fix for uncured spray paint is not really a long term solution for soft vinyl plastic. Despite sitting covered in baking soda for a week, all the baking soda did was create a temporary barrier on the dolls, it didn't cure the spray paint. As soon as the excess baking soda was removed and matte acrylic spray sealer was applied and allowed to dry, the paint underneath was still sticky and malleable and started to pull off. Too much time and resources were spent trying to salvage the dolls so we decided to scrap them and move on.

Creepy Doll Mask Prop

The old "mask in the jar" ploy using a creepy doll half mask we got on sale last fall.

Painting Mistakes Part 2

Coating the uncured spray paint on the dolls with baking soda has indeed salvaged our "solvent based spray paint doesn't cure on soft vinyl plastics" mistake. The dolls are at least usable now for display in the "swamp witch's cupboard". We decided to skip adding activated charcoal powder because we really didn't know how any of this would work out. The next phase is to test a light coat of water based acrylic matte sealer spray over one of the dolls and see if it actually cures and hardens over the baking soda coated paint. If that's successful, we'll at least apply a watered down black latex paint antique coat over the dolls. If not, the dolls will have to be displayed "as is".

Happy Halfoween!

Happy Halfoween! We're currently busy curating creepy dolls for our "Haunted Bayou" themed Halloween haunt this year.