If you’ve been around my work for a while, you know that this is the third year I’ve created a completely one-of-a-kind, exclusive Halloween set. Yes, I’m talking about the dragon coffin sets, and this year’s set is my most detailed yet!
They will also be available for a super fun auction event this weekend over on the No Pants No Problem (NPNP) page on Instagram. NPNP is a biweekly auction house that does themed releases. They have a set of recurring makers offering special items/prices and also feature guest makers each auction. I will be one of those guests :)! The theme is cute and spooky fall, and I am so happy to be joining so many wonderful makers for the best theme of all time.
Since we’re coming up on this event, I wanted to give you a first look at the dragon coffins and what else will be available from me this weekend. So without further ado, I decided to follow a theme for this year’s dragon coffin set: Nightmare before Christmas!
While there are so many characters that could probably be dragonfied from this movie, I decided to stick to the classic (and my favorite) Jack and Sally. I just love how their colors work together, with Jack’s black and white and Sally’s rich colors, and I wanted to really play off of those.
Jack dragon coffin
For Jack, the colors were fairly straightforward, and I had some of my stripe cane leftover from the first time I made Jack. His body is white, with black accents, and I sculpted some skeletal details in his fingers, toes, wings, and tail. These lines were filled in with black paint to give them more dimension.
His coffin has a striped front to match his little jacket. I decided to paint the rest of the outside black to contrast against Jack, and the inside is silver for the same reason. This gave me a third color that complimented the color scheme without straying away from the black and white too much.
Lastly, I decided to make a bigger version of his bat accessory to decorate the front. I felt that even with the striped pattern, it needed a little extra piece to stand on a similar ground to Sally’s, and to pull it together with the dragon inside.
Sally dragon coffin
I used the colors on Sally’s dress to decorate the coffin, the magenta, teal, golden yellow and black. The more vibrant version of Sally’s dress is my favorite, so those are the colors I mixed up. The coffin and dress were completely hand painted, as I felt this would be the best way to get the intricate details of her dress.
The front of her coffin has a series of geometric shapes painted in the pattern of her dress. This followed her dress as far as fabric patterns are concerned, but I changed up the layout and patches. The rest of the outside is a bright light blue (a tad more pastel than her skin tone, but I thought it went really well with the other colors). I painted the inside in tones from her dress as well to tie everything together and make sure she would contrast well with the background. I chose the magenta and golden yellow for these areas, as I felt the black would make everything else seem dull, and I didn’t want the teal to blend into her body color.
Halloweentown jack-o-lantern
I also knew I wanted to create a fairy-house-esque figurine for this auction. Sticking to another fandom I loved growing up, I ended up moving away from the standard fairy house idea pretty early on but still made a miniature figurine with a similar feel. I’ve been saving up a little squat glass jar I planned on upcycling, and it was the perfect shape to create a pumpkin house, and then I knew it had to be the jack-o-lantern from Halloweentown. Who else adored this movie??
There are 3 parts to this piece: the pumpkin, the stem, and the base, and once everything was baked, I gave this a good sanding so that it feels super smooth. I shaded the pumpkin crevices with brown paint, and to add some more dimension, I also did something I don’t usually do: I added red paint to the pumpkin and wiped it off. This deepened the orange, giving it an older, more rustic look.
The stone base of the pumpkin was much more simplified in my figurine, so I didn’t concern myself with carving out the intricate details of the pedestal, but I did use granite clay to give it a more stone-like appearance, and I painted the word “Halloweentown” (again, this isn’t the only wording on the pedestal in the movie, but I wanted to bring in the basics to mimic the original) in black acrylic paint before sealing everything off.
Originally, I wasn’t going to have a light for this and instead give off the impression of a lit inside using a light translucent yellow clay, but then I found some fun paper lantern lights on Amazon that would fit inside, so it looks great lit up and not!
