Mario Kart Halloween

This year, we chose Mario Kart - Bowser's Castle course for our Halloween display.

-large rectangular piece of foam *for this one we used shipping foam from around a massage chair
-fill in open areas to give even surface (with foam piece and spray foam
-cut out surrounding edge pattern with hot wire cutter - attach with spray foam
-use exacto knife to trim expanded spray foam
-use battery-operated sander to smoothy and round edges
-if notice cracks in spray foam - may do touch-ups at this time *not always needed - sometimes for appearance, sometimes for strength and stability - trim expanded foam and sand again as needed
-base coat of gray paint
-use foam pipe covers/insulator to make eyebrows, mouth, and trim around edge pattern
-use thin foam for teeth and eyes
-paint
-light spray if textured spray paint - from good distance as spray paint will melt the styrofoam if too much, too close

-we took a picture from the actual video game - Mario Kart, Bowsers Castle Course.
-sometimes we are able to free-hand draw, sometimes we use a projector to trace, and sometimes we do the math (and ratio up for size)
-again used a large, rectangular piece of foam (from the side of a massage chair), we filled in the foam holes with blocks of foam, and spray foam
-sanded to smooth out edges, did a flat gray paint, and touched it up with a light textured spray paint to add depth
-we attached him to the roof, and wired in lights for his eyes, and have a pipe (seen in 2nd photo) to blow fog out his mouth

-Our first kart was Mario, and we based the design on a small toy car that we purchased
-We then used the sizing on that, and chose our other cars based on if we liked how they looked - built them based off pictures we found on the internet
-All made out of styrofoam - spray foam for glue - indoor/outdoor paint
-Wheels are foam tires on wood doweling - most will roll a bit, but not smoothly
-We started out not great at figures (though improved a lot over this build), so started out doing "Lego-style" digures - you can tell Bowser was our last one as there is significant improvement over Yoshi

-Glued 2 pieces of styrofoam together
-Rough cut into circle using hot wire cutter
-Electric sander to smooth it out
-Base red coat of pain
-use spray foam to attach small squares of cellophane (red, orange, yellow)
-drilled holes through the middle and attached them to doweling
-used a rotisserie from a BBQ to make them spin

-Used a sump pump bucket (painted green) for the pipe
-Carved the Piranha Plant out of styrofoam
-Used an electric sander to smooth the edges
-Painted with indoor-outdoor paint
-Attached to a piece of plywood and wedged into
sump pump bucket - cover opening with landscape fabric

Black bobombs:
-glued together styrofoam blocks with spray foam to make a square which we could carve into a sphere
-rough carve into sphere using hot foam knife
-used electric sander to smooth out edges
-painted black with white eyes
-added winding key and feet made out of styrofoam - glued on with spray foam
-took the cap from a spray foam can - cut it in half (height) - pierced a hole on the top and added twine for the fuse - the glued to the top for his hat

Red bobomb (about to blow):
-Painted a hamster ball red - put flashing puck light inside
-Used same technique for feet, key, hat as listed above
*hat had cellophane lit fuse instead of twine)

-We laid down plastic sheeting
-Placed rope light and chunks of styrofoam on top
-Laid down another piece of plastic sheeting on top
-Spray painted black and red
-Covered top with spray foam and chunks of styrofoam
-Painted black