Print With My Pic

If you are planning an Egyptian party of an Egyptian themed Halloween, a sarcophagus is a prop that will will really bring it to life.  For Halloween 2010, I made a sarcophagus that took about 5 hours to put together, shape and decorate.  It also cost me less than $40 , but could be done cheaper.

Here it is all done:

I used 1 foam insulation sheet from the local hardware store.  They cost about $8 each.  It was 4cm thick and that seemed to be a good thickness to make the sarcophagus sturdy.

I drew a small template on paper and set out the proportions on the styrofoam.

I drew lines on the styrofoam creating a center line to follow and 4 sections for balance.  Then I drew the sarcophagus pattern right onto the styrofoam using a black marker.  You will want to pay some attention to balance but if it’s slightly wonky, no one will notice.

drawn on:

then using a box knife, cut the pattern out: (save the extra foam for other pieces)

You can see that I’ve already drawn the face and head piece on the foam.  You need to do the same.  If you need to make changes do so.  Once you’re happy, go over the lines with the thick end of the marker.  Then lay a piece of paper over the outline and make a stencil.  Cut out the stencil to trace onto and extra piece of foam.

Next, using your stencil, cut off the head piece, leaving the face and ears!  I actually forgot to add ears but remembered before cutting out the face portion.

then, cut a bit off the top and cut off the ears to make the face and crown for our pharaoh.  So, the face will be 3 layers thick.  Sorry, I don’t have a picture for that portion, but here’s what it should look like when you stack your pieces:

I cut up a few extra pieces using an exacto knife. I made eyebrows, a nose and lips.  These portions will be coming out a bit and rather than sanding everything down, gluing on pieces is easier.  Again wonky pieces are fine.  Our sarcophagus is old, aged, broken, damaged, cracked from 1,000s of years of aging :)

You could stop here, glue, sand, and paint.  That would certainly be good enough for the effect.  However, I added feet and arms as well.

For feet I just made a simple pattern and cut out a bunch of pieces.  I glued them all together first and afterward I glued them onto the body.

for the arms, I drew on the foam again and made a paper stencil.  Then I cut out the pieces from extra pieces of foam or use a second sheet.  Glue everything on and wait.  You can use elmers glue or wood glue.

After the glue dries, we just need to sand everything down and get it smooth.  I used sever different sand papers, a very coarse sand paper first, then a medium level and fine sand paper at the end to get a smooth texture.

Here it is all sanded down.  I also bought a small cobra toy snake to add to the head piece.  That cost $5 and I got it online from amazon.com.

After it was sanded, I painted the whole thing black, using water based house paint.  Don’t use spay paint.  Spray paint will dissolve the foam and ruin your work.  I used the black house paint (diluted with %30 more water) to get a coat on the sarcophagus and that way the gold paint wouldn’t seep into the cracks as much, making the gold paint (more expensive) last longer.

Then, once the black paint was dry,  I used masking tape to make the stripes for the head piece.  I also used masking tape for the pattern across the legs.

Lastly, I coated the whole thing with gold paint (a little expensive $20).  Remove the masking tape and we’re done!

You could add lashes and a hook to the hands, but I have bigger fish to fry.  So, I just left it as is for my Egyptian Halloween party.

Good luck!

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 28th, 2010 at 5:00 am and is filed under holidays and tagged: decorating, Egyptian, Halloween, October, prop. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.