Back to Departmen 56 Gallery Roger's Halloween Coffin Display Roger J. Beauregard/Creative Villages mailto:rjbeauregard@comcast.net The following is a sequence of pictures that were taken while I was building this Halloween display in an 8ft coffin. This was challenging because I had to try and fit all the current and new buildings in a limited space. Because the coffin was 16 to 18 inches deep I first had to raise up the base to be just a few inches deep. I built spacers out of Styrofoam to fit in and support the two inch thick piece of foam that was now going to be the base of the display. Once the base was filled in I started to roughly place the buildings where I thought they would look good. This doesn't mean they stayed in those positions because in the process of building a display other pieces might come into play that will look better than your first layout ideas. . I then started to build up the Styrofoam with levels that would create the setting that I had in mind. . After the levels were cut and shaped to fit the next process was to cut in the stairs and road and walkways that would lead to the different levels and buildings. .. Once all the carving was complete my next step was to spray the Styrofoam with an ink wash that I used to fill in all the little nooks and crannies that were created when the Styrofoam was cut with heat. Using a paint brush and paint would be too time consuming. After several coats of the ink wash dried I started to give the foam the final finish with paint and ground cover. I try to make my displays look as real a possible so I put in lots of detail. This is very time consuming but in the end the results are very gratifying. Halloween is a fun village because you can do different thing in your display that you would not normally do in another village. So crazy and fun are good. Use that imagination and have a good time building your village. If there are any questions regarding how I did things in this display please feel free to email me. Please put in the subject matter to say 'Display Question' or something to that effect. I will answer your questions the best I can. It's always fun to relay ideas and help out fellow display builders. Have a creatively good time. Roger J. Beauregard Creative Villages