How To Create a Spooky Dress Form for Halloween

Today's post is because everyone needs a dead bride on the lawn at Halloween. Where are my Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society people? 

Side note: Several years ago while a blog partner (Anyone remember The Professor and the Housewife?) and I were discussing the book on our site the surviving author of the book emailed me and told me that Dead Bride was a game she and her sister loved to play as children! 

A couple of years later by sheer coincidence, my husband and I ended up on the isle of Guernsey. This is me at The Little Chapel with the book!

But dead brides and Halloween aside today's project is pretty versatile!

One  Saturday morning a few years ago while browsing Pinterest I ran across this idea of making a sculpture out of chicken wire.  Luckily I had just enough leftover chicken wire behind the Honey Shed that I thought I'd give it a whirl. As you can see she's fun to decorate for fall or spring!

I rolled the chicken wire into a tube and twisted the ends together using wire cutters. I didn't stop to get my camera to take pics along the way, but it was a matter of simply scrunching it together with my hands (wear gloves!), twisting some loose ends, and cutting off the excess.  I loved being able to walk all the way around a project.

Even though I sometimes decorate her most of the time she stands elegantly and simply in the garden just like this. 

Start to finish it took about 3 hours and cost nothing since I already had the wire. I love the way she looks in the garden at dusk. It would be fun to make several of these and spray them with glow in the dark paint for the front lawn on Halloween. 

 

I loved her just like this but last spring I decided it would be fun to fill her out a bit more. Less ghostlike, more like a topiary in dress form. I had some sheet moss I had purchased on sale and I used floral wire to wrap it onto the form. I planted two pots of ivy, one that sat on the ground and one that sat in a plant stand near where her waist is. I pulled the ivy through the wire and used some bits of moss here and there to help fill in while I'm waited for the ivy to grow thicker. 

Have you ever created a large sculpture or topiary?