Shall we Dance?
Deborah, Bud and all their friends
(this was sent in by two couples, so I've composite a tad)
We
hold dance parties every Friday night at the Sunnyvale Community Center
in California. My husband and I are avid LOTR fans, so we decided to do
something super special this year & did a Middle Earth Ball for
Halloween instead of the usual black cat/witchy theme. We had about
about 12 helpers for 3 weeks helping us make the design sets. I knew
that I'd be much too busy to make my own costume, so I had someone else
make my Arwen costume for me. Whew!
The design sets are all made of cardboard, foam, paint (spray,
fabric, exterior types) & tape.
We had the Doors of Durin set up at the entrance. We took a picture
from one of my LOTR books & blew it up, then made a graph on top of it.
The doors are actually made of styrofoam, painted black with felt
marker, and we drew veins in. Then the styrofoam was charted out with
string, held in by pins. Using the chart, we had a volunteer artist free
hand the design. She then did the carving using a sautering iron.
Natural glow-in-the-dark fabric paint made the final touches. Having it
be free-standing was a bit tricky, but press board attached behind it,
and some lumber provided the support. Looked absolutely terrific with
the black light on it!
From
theonering.net, we made up some of the recipes and placed them under a
Prancing Pony sign (lembas bread, Merry's mulled cider, Gimli's
seedcake, Smaug's gems), I liked it so much that I've asked my husband
to remake this in wood, and we'll see about hanging it outside in the
garden!
Perhaps over the hobbit bench that my Dad and I put together a few
days before the show, with the wood donations from the landscape
consultant working next door.
Mount Doom is simply an extremely large black tarp, held up with tall
speaker poles & standing cardboard boxes. Added red foam to make lava
and the final touch being a cheap electric "flame" purchased from a
Halloween store really completed the look.
The
most popular set was Bag End. This had a ton of work put into it, and as
you can see, it's mostly just cardboard & paint. The bricks were tricky,
and we had make quite a few prototypes before deciding on simple
cardboard with "stoning" paint sprayed on it. We tried spray paint for
the beige walls, but finally went down to the local hardware store to
get exterior paint. MUCH happier! Grass is simply green craft paper run
3/4 way through a shredder. The bench was made by my Dad (as already
mentioned. The flower planter you ask? Grey foam glued onto a cardboard
box, mortar is whitish insulating foam (comes in a spray can...doesn't
really harden as much as the yellow stuff, but looks better). We filled
the bottom with styroam peanuts in large plastic bags and craft store
aqua foam & flowers. The aqua foam held the flowers a little tighter
than the peanuts by themselves. Then fill in with moss & voila! The
curtains are simple scraps held onto the house with dowels, and you can
see Bilbo in the window. He really doesn't want company, as you can see
with the sign on the door! The "wood frames" around the house are made
of styrofoam with craft paper painted to look like wood, held onto the
walls I think with paper clips! The walls were then cut to look a bit
like it's on a hill, then the grass added.
Isengard took quite a bit of time to build. Bud had experimented
quite a bit before finally finding how he wanted to do it. We purchased
a 3D puzzle and spent an evening at our friends home putting it
together. They were most gracious in opening their home & garage to us
for 3 weeks to get this done. On Sundays, we never seemed to leave,
working there for usually 10-12 straight hours! Anyway, after the puzzle
was done, Bud played with various ways to do it, finally coming up with
cutting up black foam to make the bottom jutting-out pieces (I'm sure
these have a name) onto cardboard. The windows were made of foam with
liquid leading (used for making stained glass projects). The final
touches of spray painting the whole thing black didn't get done till we
got there to the party that night. In fact, quite a few things didn't
get completed until that very night!
Lothlorien was simply borrowed trees from Bud's mom and the Community
Center's lobby, a garden arch that I had never had a chance to put
together (this was one of those things that was put together just before
the LOTR dance party started), ivy strung through the arch touched up by
and Christmas icicle & fairy lights. A "Welcome to Lothlorien" sign
completed the look.
Banners
were hung around the room to add some add'l festivity. I had made one of
the banners of Rohand from felt, using stitch witchery, and edged it in
simply gold-toned trim. Other banners were borrowed from SCA members.
Much work was put into these design sets & much of what was done,
either didn't work or didn't get used. We had the same artist who did
the Doors of Moria make maps of Middle Earth that were completed but for
whatever reason, weren't hung that night. She also made a Nazgul costume
using your website for the pattern, but the model got ill, and made only
a short appearance that evening. Too bad!!!
