These Boots Are Made for Walking

...or digging graves. I did some more work on my Gravedigger prop recently, paper maching the boots and today filling them with Great Stuff and a PVC pipe.

Er, what's that you say? You have no idea what I'm talking about? Okay, back up. I chronicled the building of my gravedigger's head and it basically sat there untouched since. I decided that I needed to get moving on him so at this month's NJ Make & Take meeting, I began anew, this time working from the ground up, so to speak.

Using a technique I gleaned (read, "stole") from IMU on the HauntForum boards, I started the boots by scrounging up an old pair of sneakers and put a cardboard calf section to give it some height.

I then paper mached the entire shoe. When it was dry, I cut out a strip of cardboard a few inches wide and wrapped it around the top, cutting a V-notch into the front so that it looked like it had been folded over. This was then mached and the top was covered as well.

On the toe area of the boot, I wanted to make it look like an old floppy style fabric boot, so I balled up some newspaper, taped it in place, and mached over it.

Today I drilled out a hole in the bottom of the boot through the sneaker as well as through the top. This is where a length of PVC pipe was inserted to provide a means of connecting it to the legs that will be built next, as well as a way of anchoring it to the ground with rebar so that it can be free standing in the yard.

As the picture at the top of the post shows, the Great Stuff expanded greatly on one of them. Tomorrow I'll trim off the excess, give it a coat of spar urethane to protect the mache, and then paint it black. I'll then be ready to move on to the next step, which will be doing the legs.