Scarecrows 1-4 A Retropsective (2007 - 2010)

2007 - Theme: Nursery Rhymes

This was our first effort in the village competition.  No frame or skeleton, just a big soft shape.  Not the first time we've reused children's wellington boots.

Humpty Dumpty - 2007

2008 - Theme: Children's books

For this effect we used a lot of Laurie's dressing up outfit that she had grown out of - the only year Caroline didn't really make the clothes.  Lots of grey dust sheet for face and arms.  However, we must have been doing something right as we won this year.

Peter Pan - 2008

2009 - Theme: Musicals

Bit of a theme stretch here, I think for some reason we wanted to do a disco queen and so we played the Mamma Mia card.  More grey skin...

Abba disco queen - 2009

2010 - Theme: Characters with animals

I think this was the year we really started to lose sight of reality and really started getting carried away.  In addition to the scarecrow we had 3 sheep all over the garden and roof of the house plus, the final outing for the grey skinned arms we had recycled 3 years on a run.

Little Bo Peep (& her sheep) - 2010

2 of the 3 sheep.  Chicken wire bodies and canes for legs.

Scarecrow No. 6 - Straw Power (2012)

This year the village scarecrow theme was the olympics so after much debate as to which sport to pick we settled on weightlifting.  This years theme needed a much more dynamic pose than previous years (though not as dynamic as the pole vaulting idea I was pushing...) so a complete rebuild of the basic frame was in order.  In fact we went back to basics:

Initial wooden frame (April 10th 2012)

We recycled previous years wire and by the end of the day we had a basic body shape.

Basic body shape (April 10th 2012)

Some months pass and we improve the body parts.  Caroline has been working on the head and we go for the first freaky dressing of our Olympian.  Another year and another wig supplied by the excellent FiFi's in Swanage.

Head, arms and floating weight bar... (June 10th 2012)

2 weeks later and Caroline has finished most of the body dressing and has started adding the straw.  The weights are added (polystyrene ceiling tiles on a garden cane sprayed silver - even I could lift them!)

Full dress rehearsal (24th June 2012)

The big day arrives and (St)raw power is moved to the front garden for display.

Finished - (June 29th 2012)

Despite this being probably our most ambitious (certainly the biggest - it came it at nearly 7ft) and I think most successful scarecrow to date, we failed to place in the votes.  Caroline puts it down to his face and the fact that we think we scared the children.  Hey it is a scarecrow I suppose.

Scarecrow No 5(b) - Scary Halloween

This was the nearest we've come to a commission for a scarecrow.  The school PTA were looking for props for the schools Halloween party.  Somehow I agreed to do a scary scarecrow.  Given we have a scarecrow frame permanently up in various states of dress near the shed it seemed a natural thing to do...



From the start I wanted a pumpkin head with a flickering flame.  Health and safety dictated we couldn't have a real flame so I spent about 4 times along trying to make a mechanical one as I did on the rest of the scarecrow.

Testing the flame.

The flame was built by taking one of the fans from a toy RC hovercraft and mounting a group of super bright red LEDs on top.  Finally (and this took the most fiddling) attaching some reflective strips of fabric that wave about over the fan when switched on and reflect the red light.  I started with some red clear cellophane which wasn't very effective.  In the end some silver reflective fabric performed best.  It looks a bit lame in the video, but trust me, it was quite effective whirring away inside the pumpkin.

The final challenge was mounting the "flame" in the pumpkin and the pumpkin on the scarecrow frame.  Pumpkins are quite heavy so there was a lot of rope (painted orange) holding it all in place.  On the night, it stayed up and the whirring of the fan added quite a nice moaning effect to the whole thing.  Plus we had some spare pumpkins left over for carving.

Pumpkin Head at the school.

A properly lit pumpkin I carved.

Scarecrow No. 5 - Crowpatra

Theme for the village scarecrow this year is Kings and Queens (it's a royal wedding year!).  Caroline comes up with the idea of a Cleopatra scarecrow modelled on Liz Taylors portrayal of the role.

Head fitting to basic frame

We didn't need to worry about legs for this one, it's all hidden by the dress.  Hair and accessories courtesy of Fifi's fancy dress in Swanage.

Arms starting to take shape

Nearly finished

 The necklace was made of cardboard, sprayed gold and finished with studs.

Ready for display, complete with pyramids

This year we went over the top and had a small speaker playing a looped CD with clips of Walk Like an Egyptian and Egyptian Reggae for the punters.  Whether or not people liked it or even noticed the music - it won!