'08 Halloween #25: Jason in about an Hour.

Here's a quick and easy Jason dummy project. Best for a window filler or seen from a long distance when detail is not important.

Canned insulation spray foam like Great Stuff should become a main tool in any Halloween decorators arsenal. It's one downside is also it's best feature... it expands into unpredictable forms. I'm guilty of going crazy with it in the past. I've since scaled back now and often only use as an accent. I particularly love it for creating dirt mounds around tombstones.

A real surprise to me was how it made a decent looking, down and dirty Jason Vorhees dummy head last year. It started as an accident. Some excess foam had dripped off a prop on the worktable onto a styrofoam head sitting on the floor. Looking like an odd tumorous growth, it hit me...a distinct feature to Jason is his huge swollen and scarred head behind the mask. Since I had a mask, I thought I'd just go with it for fun. In the end, I created a companion to my Micheal Myers mannequin in little over an hour.

Total time spent creating the head was 5 minutes (minus drying time which was cured enough to paint in about 45 minutes sitting in the sun). Materials: canned foam, black spray paint, pink and red paint, styrofoam head and of course a hockey mask.


The "how to" is mindless. Cover the whole head in foam but leave the area directly under the mask clean so it will not create an odd shape. This way the mask will be flat and look right. While the foam sets up, it's a good time to create the body. Mine was the traditional "scarecrow" method. I safety pinned some overalls, old shirt and work gloves together. Then it was stuffed with crumpled newspaper. Yea, not a movie accurate costume but it's what I had. This made for a fun project to share with my niece Devin last year...


Once the foam dried, I spray painted it all black (btw, black spray foam is also available). I then gave it a wash of red paint and then a dry brushing of the pink. A few washes of brown paint probably wouldn't hurt looking at these pictures. Put the mask on and done! You could also skip all the above and just buy one of those full head version masks and costumes.


He's got good bones to be used again as standing mannequin this year and made a bit better. I'll add some whispers of hair and detailed painting. I'll post pics when done.

Now, where did I put that machete?