PVC sculptures can look a little flaky the rest of the year. But Halloween night is their night to shine — “in a bony light.”
Buy 90-degree and 45-degree elbows and T-intersections in ten-packs if you can. Four-way intersections will be very useful if you want to make vertebrae, but you won't need many. Photos: Tom Angleberger
Personally, I’m not into a lot of planning ahead. Dumping out all the parts and building a skeleton during the waning hours of daylight on Oct. 31 is part of the fun. To do this you need a good stockpile of PVC pipe and connectors. For the price of a Lego kit (or two), you can load up on a ton of parts at the hardware store. No glue! You’ll want to take it apart and build something else later.
For years, I used a saw to cut the pipe into useful lengths. Often I would just make do with whatever was on hand. Then I made a great investment and bought a PVC cutter for about $10. This really allows you to build creatively — quickly cutting pieces when needed.
If your Geeklets are too young to help build, you can always let them decide what sort of animal to make and then see if you can meet the challenge by building it with the parts you’ve got on hand.
