Beetlejuice Sandworm

When we decided on a Tim Burton theme, the first thing I knew I wanted to build was a sandworm -- and it had to be HUGE. I considered something lightweight that could be broken down and stored (we have very little storage space) but everything I thought of (like fabric stretched over tent frames) seemed like it would require engineering (and sewing) skills beyond my abilities. I thought about vent tubes and cylinders that could be assembled into a curved stack -- but nothing was going to be big enough to look like it could actually eat someone, and I didn't want it to look too neat and even. It needed to look like an enormous claymation monster... and the best way I could think of was a chicken wire frame covered in foam.

• Lots of chicken wire with large holes
• Medium-gauge wire to hold the chicken wire sections together
• Spray foam (LOTS!)
• A large round plastic tub
• Monster mud (drywall joint compound plus outdoor latex paint)
• Outdoor latex paint
• Acrylic paint
• Foam sheet
• Gorilla glue
• Two large plastic domes (from recycled packaging)
• Various knives and carving tools, wire cutters, pliers, gloves, a hot-wire foam cutter
• Foam chips in plastic bags for stuffing (probably optional but I wanted to increase stability)
• Bourbon optional. May not help with avoiding chicken wire scratches.

This was assembled in sections beginning with the inner head and the tongue, with each section wired onto the next. Chicken wire is so easy to sculpt as long as your wear gloves to prevent (most of) the scrapes and cuts. I just formed sections of the wire mesh into tubes and then scrunched and bent those sections into the shapes I wanted.

Because I wanted to make this monster big enough that it looked like it could eat someone, I kept going until it was nearly nine feet tall. (For some reason my husband began looking concerned around this point.)

When the main body was done I added the outer mouth and the fin.

Once the wire frame was finished I decided to add some filler to keep it from collapsing on itself (though in retrospect I don't think it would have) so I used bags of foam chips left over from a previous build. Lightweight and bulky and probably utterly pointless!

Finally, because it's so tall and not very heavy, I wanted to add a weight at the bottom to hold it down. I didn't want it to be too heavy to carry around, though, so I wired a large round plastic tub into the base. It helped the worm's stability and when filled with water (once the worm was in position) it was heavy enough to hold it down.

Next it was time for an absolute ton of spray foam! I think in total it ended up taking 18 large cans, so... that's a lot.

At first I thought I might need to wrap the chicken wire in plastic film so the foam didn't just go straight through the holes, but it wasn't necessary -- the foam sunk into the wire mesh a little, but remained on the surface, making the shape even sturdier because the foam was fused around the frame. The sections with a plastic layer underneath weren't as structurally sound and one spot eventually split and needed to be repaired. Learn from my mistake!

This part is SO FUN.

I mostly use a sharp paring knife from my kitchen to slice away chunks of foam in fairly big pieces (which is why I had bags of foam chips to use as stuffing) and it's not as messy as planing or sanding. I've tried various other tools -- saws, hot-wire cutters, rasps, x-acto knives -- but none work as well as the paring knife. I use an x-acto for tiny areas with more details, but virtual all of the carving is with the kitchen knife.

Once I'm happy with the shape I use a hand plane (the kind that's like a grater for wood) to smooth out the surface. This step is super messy and leaves foam dust all over, so I wear a mask and keep the doors open for ventilation.

After planing I use a large paintbrush to brush away all the foam dust before painting.

One downside of carving spray foam is the inevitable holes that are revealed. Once the carving was basically complete I did a little touch-up work with yet another can of spray foam to fill in all the holes that had been revealed.

The other problem that appeared at this point was that the bottom section, which I'd foolishly covered with plastic film before adding the foam, wasn't as sturdy as the rest -- and since it was supporting the whole sandworm, it ended up cracking where the foam and plastic had pulled away from the chicken wire.

Spray foam to the rescue once more! I applied more foam from the inside (which was a little tricky considering there was a large plastic tub in the way) and probably overdid it, but I wanted to make sure there wouldn't be any more structural issues. You can see my not-so-pretty internal repair work in the picture that shows the worm's base.

At this point I also cut out a circle of foam (a little bigger than a hose) just above the height of the tub on the back side of the worm. I wedged it back in place and it was barely visible once it was painted.

Whenever possible I like to used salvaged and recycled things in my builds. The eyes are made of clear plastic domes (which I found at the local scrap store) that look like they were some sort of food packaging originally -- maybe for a cake? I cut the domes, which are about 8 inches in diameter, from their bases and then painted the insides with acrylic paint so they'd be super shiny on the outside.

Once they were ready I marked the location on the outer head and carved a slice into the foam to slide the plastic into the surface and make it more secure. After the body was covered in monster mud (in the next step) I glued the eyes in place with Gorilla glue.

This was my first year using monster mud and I'm a big fan! It not only smooths and seals the foam, but it hardens much more than paint and makes the whole thing a lot sturdier without adding too much weight. If you aren't familiar with monster mud, it's a mix of latex paint and some sort of hardener. I've seen a few different recipes, but the one I used was extremely simple: Four parts of premixed drywall joint compound to one part of outdoor latex paint.

I'd previously been scared off by instructions online that warn of needing special mixing bits on power drills and making buckets of this stuff at a time, but you can mix it up in small batches and it's fine. I mixed it in my kitchen using a recycled yogurt pot as a measuring cup and just stirred the ingredients together with a spoon in a recycled plastic takeout box. I probably repeated that process 5-6 times over the course of painting this 9-foot-tall monster, but I liked having a manageable quantity to carry around -- and I could re-seal it to take breaks in applying it. Overall I got through most of a bucket of drywall joint compound and about half of a can of white paint.

The monster mud gets painted over pretty much everything, but be warned -- once it's on, the surface is very hard and feels almost like cement. It fills in small holes in the foam and can repair small cracks. But I suspect it's a little trickier to glue things to, so I left gaps along the insides of the mouths, and around the eyes, so I could glue pieces in place more easily.

The two heads have very different teeth -- the inner one has lots of tiny ones, but the outer head has long, striped teeth spaced farther apart. After briefly considering using the white plastic caps from all those cans of spray foam (first pic) I settled on cutting teeth from a big sheet of foam I'd salvaged from the scrap store. This is the dense, flexible, plasticky kind of foam used in shipping, so it's tough and doesn't crumble.

I marked off tooth shapes with a ruler and then cut them out with a hot-wire foam cutter, which I also used to shape one end of each into a point, and the other into a slight concave shape to fit into the curved inner lips.

I cut short pieces of wire and used Gorilla glue to hold them in place embedded in the bases of the teeth, and I painted black stripes around the longer teeth. But I couldn't add the teeth until the insides of the mouths were painted...

I marked off the stripes first (it took a little trial and error, as you can see) and then painted the white sections with cheap outdoor latex paint. I added the black stripes (also cheap outdoor latex paint) on the tongue, then painted the insides of the mouths with red acrylic. In retrospect I should have used outdoor paint (or at least higher-quality acrylics) because the red paint did eventually run after a few weeks of rainy British weather. Lesson learned.

Once the insides of the mouths were ready I poked the teeth into the foam (the little wire prongs let me try them in different positions and rearrange to make sure they looked right) and then glued them in place with more Gorilla glue.

I finished the paint job with the black stripes on the body, the turquoise lips (latex wall paint), and the painted eyes and spots on the inner head (all acrylics that held up just fine outside).

It was finally time to reclaim our dining room and move the sandworm outside!

It's not the easiest to move around -- at least in a London-sized house and yard! -- because he's nearly 9 feet tall, 3 feet wide and a weird shape. He's pretty light, though: I'd guess he weighs 30-40 pounds, which is why he needs the tub of water to help hold him down. The last pic shows the hole I carved to insert the hose. Once the foam plug is put back you can barely see it. And it did the trick -- despite his height and some pretty windy weather around Halloween, he never tipped.

The sandworm joined my homemade Jack Skellington, Beetlejuice tombstone and thematic Tim Burton-related tombstones in our very, very small front yard. The neighbors were... a little confused :-) Halloween in the U.K. isn't anywhere near what it is in North America and plenty of people weren't familiar with the movie (one child insisted it was "a shark eating a shark" and lots of people called it "a snake monster"). The ones who got it, though, were pretty excited!

Completing our Tim Burton theme we dressed as Beetlejuice, Lydia Deetz, Edward Scissorhands and the Oogie Boogie Man and (obviously) we greeted trick-or-treaters with a Danny Elfman soundtrack.

Despite occasional rain showers we had more than 600 visitors. That's a ton by London standards -- and we're on a pretty quiet street. I think I'm slowly winning the Brits over to the fun of Halloween!