Medusa's Garden Halloween Display

Our 2021 Halloween theme was Greek mythology, with our very limited outdoor space styled as Medusa's Garden. The main build was the two life-size human figures for her victims who'd been turned to stone.

For Medusa's victims I wanted an aggressive warrior (who definitely had it coming) and someone cowering in terror (she probably deserved it too) who would look like weathered stone statues that had once been human. I needed them to be life-size and fairly detailed, but also survive a couple weeks outdoors in the inevitable British rain, so I decided on a combination of foam and paper mache and then I covered them in masonry sealer and paint to (somewhat) protect them from weather.

I make as much as I can out of scrap and repurposed materials but I did buy spray foam, tape and masonry sealer.

• thin wooden strips and recycled PVC pipes for frames
• scrap cardboard
• duct tape and masking tape
• newspaper and flour for paper mache
• scrap fabric sheet
• spray insulation foam
• various cutting/sculpting tools
• masonry sealer
• black and gray spray paint

I started with the warrior because he was bigger and more complicated -- he needed visible legs, rather than a simple frame draped in a dress.

I cobbled together some scraps of wood (and unfortunately also some MDF/particleboard that ended up being too flimsy) into a basic skeleton shape and reinforced the joints with tape. I also screwed the legs into a plank for stability, but it didn't end up being big or sturdy enough to keep him upright. My advice for this stage would be to make sure the base is very big and very stable if you need your figure to stand alone! This dude ended up leaning on a wall.

To create the bulk of the body I used garbage bags stuffed with foam scraps from a previous year's build -- but crumpled up newspaper or other lightweight waste could be used for stuffing.

I smooshed it all into shape and held it in place with copious amounts of masking tape.

I may have overdone the booty.

He's still headless at this stage because I decided to carve his face from foam so I could include more detail, but once I finished shaping his body, I paper mached the whole thing. I tried to get a balance between making him sturdy enough that he wouldn't crack like a piñata and keeping him from weighing a ton, but he ended up being a little heavier than I wanted.

After the paper mache was dry I cut armor from scrap cardboard, taped it in place, and added paper mache to the armor to give it a little more bulk. We also had a cardboard trident left over from a school project, so he got that too.

The second body was a lot simpler, with a base and spine made of PVC repurposed from a previous build, arms made of scrap wood and repurposed insulation tubes, and a torso made of cardboard and stuffed with more bags of foam chips. Once I bulked her up with more foam and tape on the arms, chest and neck, I draped an old sheet around the body and covered all of it in more paper mache.

I might love paper mache too much.

I don't love the way her arms came out -- they're too lumpy and I wonder if I should have just used foam insulation tubes (or pool noodles) instead. Also hands are hard. I tried stuffing rubber gloves with foam, but they were fat and lumpy, so in the end I just made them out of cardboard bulked up with foam chips, but then they were too flat.

I used a large can of spray insulation foam to make head-sized piles of foam (inside a scrap cardboard box) with a piece of wood (for the guy) and a mailing tube (for the woman) set in the middle, for mounting the heads onto the necks. Once the foam was dry I carved away the excess with a sharp kitchen knife to get the right general shape, then I used an x-acto knife to carve the faces and hair.

I gave them each a coat of paper mache to protect them, and once that was dry I taped them onto the necks and sealed the seam with more paper mache.

Once the builds were complete I gave them a heavy coat of masonry sealer to protect them from the elements. Since it's gray and has a gritty texture it also helped make them look more stone-like.

I added some highlights, shading and detail with black and gray spray paint.

After a few days in the London rain the bodies were holding up reasonably well, but the flimsy wrapping-paper-tube trident went floppy. The warrior was so embarrassed. I threw together a quick sword out of a long stick and some cardboard and painted it to match. Dignity restored!

In addition to the two stone figures, I also made a Medusa's Garden sign out of scrap wood and a Medusa silhouette for the front window out of a sheet of black posterboard.

I built Cerberus a 2D doghouse (with a triple opening for the three heads) out of a repurposed sheet of wood from a previous display.

Upstairs in the window is a loom and a sign for Arachne's Workshop, with Arachne in spider form sneaking down the front of the house for a snack. I built the giant spider (out of chicken wire, foam, wire, pipe insulation, duct tape and a bunch of recycled Christmas baubles) more or less following the tutorial from Wicked Makers.

And I had a spare chunk of foam and a large Christmas bauble leftover spider eye that I quickly assembled into a sign for Cy Clops Monocles.

Also, since we happened to have a Kraken sitting around, we included her on the front porch with some stray tentacles escaping into the yard. There are plenty of monsters in Greek mythology, right? Surely one of them is green and tentacly...

For a country that doesn't celebrate Halloween much, our neighborhood is pretty good for decorating and trick or treat. We got through several hundred pieces of candy (pretty amazing by London standards) and I hope we entertained the neighborhood!

Here we are as Cy Clops, Arachne, Cerberus and Medusa herself. The cyclops eye, spider butt/legs, and Medusa headpiece are all homemade too.

Definitely the rain.

The dummies held up pretty well for the week+ they were out, floppy trident notwithstanding, but they were fairly soggy and starting to get moldy by the time they came down on November 2nd. At least I didn't have to worry about storing them for another year!