DIY Halloween Coffin Wall Hanger - Decoration

Hello and welcome to my new Instructable.

While virtual shopping on YT a saw these coffin wall hangers in a video and thought that would be very cool in a larger dimension, nearly lifesize.

Please take all necessary safety precautions while working with heat, sharp objects, electricity, vapors or resulting gases, bright light, hot water or steam and whatever could endanger your health.

• Foam
• Paper
• String/Cord/Twine
• Glue (Contact cement, Hot Glue etc.)
• Acrylic Paints
• Brush/Pallet Knife
• Decoration (Skeleton Parts, spider, creepy cloth etc.)
• LED Lights (wire, soldering iron, solder)
• Cutter/Scissors
• Ruler
• Drill
• Pen
• Heat Gun

The foam pieces are 36 cm in total so every single piece would be 18 cm in height.I used packing paper I've harvested, layed it out and sketched the pattern based on the notebook sketch I've made previously.Then I cut out the pieces with my scissors.

I used light weighted EVA foam floor mats, which I luckily had in stock.

I cropped the pronged sides and glued two pieces together with contact cement. Then I cut the large piece (36 cm) into two equal halfs (2 x 18 cm), placed the pattern, traced it and cut the pieces with my sharp cutter.*

To fix the rope I drilled holes and sealed it with glue. There won't be a lot of weight but I don't wanted the holes to tear shortly.

* Assure to sharpen the blade before cutting the next piece.

I saw pictures of wood graining tools over the internet and initially wanted to buy one. But then I found alternative ways to make the foam look nearly like wood. The technique I've used is inspired by a tutorial of "Monster Tutorials". The difference is that he used another kind of foam - that made the accomplishment variant. I cut the foam and next opened the cut lines with heat by using a heat gun. That technique however was presented by a variety of makers such as "Punished Props Academy" years ago.

What I'm trying to say is, that it seams to be almost impossible not to be inspired by other makers in my opinion. Please take a look at my video and what I've done to make the foam planks look wood-a-like.

Over the years I purchased different acrylic paints in basic colors: red, blue, green, yellow, magenta, cyan, black and white. With this basic colors I'm able to mix a variety of other colors.

In this case I needed a brown tone and to mix that I used 3 basic colors yellow, magenta and cyan and a pallet knife.

For the basecoat I painted the foam with a mat black. Next I dry brushed the brown mix onto the foam. I also off camera dry brushed little highlight spots with a mix of yellow and the leftover brown.

I live in a limited amount of space and therefor most of the big projects I make have to be foldable, collapsable and portable. I spent most of the time on this project with finding a proper solution to attach the rope in a way that makes it easy to fold the wall hanger or even untie the planks and appear quite decent.

I came up with the loop idea and I wondered how to fix this the best decorative way. So I remembered my fake barbed wire instructable and created one with twine, black and copper paint in almost the same way.

At least I wrapped LED lights around the fake barbed wire.

I spontaneously had the thought to decorate the coffin wall hanger with a chain and a lock. I made this out of foam leftovers (unfortunaly a part of the building proccess pictures got lost), painted it with black acrylic paint and dry brushed it with a mixed copper acrylic paint. The chain pieces were glued together with contact cement. I also made two nails and decided to split it and with the help of some wire pin it into the foam to cover the LED holes.

Right from the beginning I was sure to install LED lights. I used a battery powered LED light string with 50 LEDs and added about 20 LEDs extra. These were soldered to the LED light string and extended with a short wire.

Last year I bought a set of skeleton parts and used one arm for decor. Therefor the creepy cloth came in handy to locate the arm. At least I added a little spider.

.. for reading, watching and paying attention. This was very interesting to make. I did wood graining for the first time and really learned a lot. I had fun with measuring, cutting, soldering LED lights, mixing paints and painting.

Another aspect I really like about this project is, that this is just a basic. You can add as much or less or every day changing decoration to it as you like. This isn't done. Yes, it is essentially created as a wall hanger but why not place it on the ground and create a new scene.

To be honest, this is obviously an onesided object. And the foam pieces have a tendency to bend. While running out of time and material and in view of the upcoming second lockdown/contact restriction, I will solve the bending problem next year, when installing the decor in my flat again.

Please let me know if you've made one as well. Hopefully Auf Wiedersehen in one of my next Instructables.