Castellon's Kitchen: Carnival Fun House Maze (Part 1 of 3)

Four years ago, I volunteered to convert my son's elementary school cafeteria into a Zombie maze for their Halloween Carnival. With a small budget, some willing helpers to donate their time and talents, we were able to transform the cafeteria into a scary main event! It was a huge hit with the kids, teachers and parents. Parent and teacher volunteers dressed in costumes and brought every turn of the maze to life and scared the daylights out of the kiddos. It was so much fun with hundreds of kids and parents waiting in line to go through it again and again. Unfortunately, I'm not able to share the How-to details of the of my first "Zombie" maze because I didn't take any "after" pictures because we were scrambling just to finish it before carnival time. I did take video, however it was way too dark. You literally can't see anything. So instead, I'll chalk up my first maze as lessons learned and focus this blog on my second maze, the Fun House Maze!

Carnival Fun House Maze- June 2017

Enter at your own risk!
Weave your way through every twist and turn of the Fun House. Feel your way through a passageway of suspended pool noodles to find a hallway full of fun house mirrors. Scary clowns will punch your ticket at an old time ticket booth to clear the way to experience classic carnival attractions...get your fortune read by a fortune teller, and witness the two headed woman and a caged wolf/man at the Freak Show exhibit. Then encounter the wheel of death and a woman sawed in half, only to race to the exit through the Clown House in Carnie-town.

It was scary on its own because of the darkness, but once the volunteers were dressed like clowns and other carnies, they really put the scare to the Fun House. Here are some pictures of the creative process and a small clip of the maze in action. Enjoy!

Clown Marquee

Inspiration for the theme of this maze came from this image on Pinterest. This scary clown marquee entrance is where it all began...
I made my version out of 6 foam boards from the Dollar Tree. I taped the back of them together and began sketching out the clown face. I painted it and aged it with black oil pastels. I cut out the teeth and rounded out the top of the head and touched up the painted the edges with black acrylic paint and mounted it to three wood furring strips.

Carnival Ticket Booth

I'm a huge fan of Roger's Gardens Halloween Boutique so every year I make the 40 min trek to Corona Del Mar on opening day. Their Boutique every year is centered around a different theme. One year it was Grimm's Fairy Tales, Harry Potter (twice) Carnival, and this year's theme was Alice in Wonderland. My inspiration for this ticket booth was inspired by an old Roger's Garden ticket booth from a Carnival theme boutique. Here is my version made with wood and cardboard,complete with a light up sign again made out of cardboard where I added a small 35 light string of lights which added a way cool effect!

Woman Sawed in Half Prop

My version of the woman sawed in half is made from a cardboard box covered with spray paint, black duct tape, watered down acrylic paint and some die cut gold stars from my friend Lili at Beautiful Paper Crafts on Etsy! I added a painted foam head, wig and used pencil and glossy nail polish for her make-up! I purchased some mannequin legs from amazon for $16. Bought some red glitter shoes from the thrift store for $2.50 and viola!
The saw was a piece of cardboard spray-painted silver and then I used squares of blue painters tape to make a zig-zag pattern that I painted black to simulate the teeth of the saw. I added a folded piece of cardboard with a hole cut out of it to make the handle. I hot-glued it to the saw blade, painted the handle brown and aged it with some watered down black paint and then added some black gaffers tape to the handle.

Check out the short video clip below of the completed prop Woman Sawed in Half with lighting, sound and our parent volunteer in action! It turned out so amazing!

Wheel of Death

This was probably the simplest of the props. I cut out a 6 foot circle from two 4'x8' double thickness cardboard from Papermart. Taped together with Duct tape on the back, light coat of white spray paint, then painted it red and distressed with watered-down black acrylic paint. I attached it to an old IKEA stand up mirror with some small screws. I added my old skeleton with some zip ties around its wrists and ankles that I hooked onto the mirror with little cup hooks. Added some plastic knives from Dollar Tree and we are done! Next time, I'll attach red rope lights around the outside.

Haunted House Backdrop

The haunted house backdrop was painted on a 12' x 15' canvas drop cloth. First I painted it with a quick, uneven coat of left-over light blue latex interior house paint. Let that dry overnight...In fact, many nights because I didn't get back to this for a few weeks. Then, I mapped the door and window placement on graph paper and then transferred it to the canvas. Next, I used an old 5 foot section of 3.5" wide baseboard to mark the siding on the house with a black sharpie. I painted the window panes and siding in black and then began adding the layers of paint to age the front of the house. I used the same latex paint but added swirls of black paint to create variation. Next, I cut out the window panes and the door lights with scissors. I added old drapes to the windows using leftover cardboard at the top and bottom of each window to keep the windows rigid once the facade was hung. I added fake glass to the door lights by laminating yellow plastic wrap and then taping it to the back side of the facade with duct tape.

Added a orange light behind the facade and added a blue swirl light to the front to give a cool eerie effect. What do you think?

Other Props:
Storage boxes that doubled as props:

Jacks on Stakes:
Unfortunately, I did not get pictures of the final clown heads on stakes, but here are the cheap clown masks I purchased and pinned to foam mannequin heads. They lined the turn to the Crazy Clown House.