Halloween

So it’s only natural to want to dress up as a piece of Taxidermy for Halloween, right? RIGHT!

I’ll be spending my Halloween this year at The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County working an event they hold called, NHM All Nighters. It’s an overnight event at the museum where adult guests sleep over in the diorama halls, drink, attend lectures, play games, watch a film and do cool activities. This sleepover themed night is called “The Art of Mounting”, which includes a behind the scenes tour with staff Taxidermist, Tim Bovard and other cool stuff all to do with TAXIDERMY. YEAH! Being on staff at the museum as Special Events Assistant has it’s perks.

We had the option to dress up for the event. A co-worker found a costume of a Taxidermy trophy deer hard online. When I took a look at the idea I was like OMG, this is perfect! SO perfect!!

We are doing this! Instead of a deer, I chose to be a Bongo. The NHM even has a Bongo diorama inside their African Mammal Hall.

Bongos are strikingly beautiful and strange looking antelope. They are the largest and most spectacular of the African forest antelopes, happen to be nocturnal(perfect for a Halloween night event) and are the only ragelaphid in which both sexes have horns.

It’s costume making time! You can make your own Taxidermy costume out of simple and affordable materials you probably have lying around your home. Below are illustrated steps of how I made my Taxidermy costume. Roll over images for a slideshow with detailed instructions.

Supplies:

cardboard
spray mount
sharpie
ruler
cutting board
scissors
exacto knife
felt
paper
paintbrush
paint
paint mixing tray
synthetic fur fabric
tape
reference photos of your animal
hot glue gun
craft glue
headband
face make-up

Choose the animal you’d like to create a Taxidermy bust of; in my case it’s a Bongo ❤

Get a couple of good reference photos to look at throughout your process

Gather all needed supplies

Draw a Taxidermy plaque on a sheet of paper. Make sure the hole in the middle will be able to fit over your head!

Cut out the plaque and tape to cardboard being careful to keep in proportion to your own head

In my case I had to extend the plaque width wise to proportionality look ok to my head. try the pattern on over your head for this step and adjust accordingly.

Cut out the plaque with an exacto knife. Try it on over your head to double check you’re happy with it before continuing.

Trace your cut out plaque on another piece of cardboard. Then draw a margin of around 1/2″ inside the plaque.

Cut out with an exacto knife the inner plaque. You should be ending up with a smaller plaque than your first one by around 1/2″.

Paint your plaque to look like wood. Mix black paint with some red.

Mix yellow paint in next until you reach your desired brown.

Paint big plaque around its edges and the smaller one completely and let dry

Spray mount the two plaques together

Mix more paint in a lighter brown and give your plaque some wood grain details

Next draw a Taxidermy name plate

Cut out the name plate out with an exacto

Paint the name plate to look gold

Paint your animal name on the plate

Cut out two tiny circles for hardware detail

Paint like gold hardware screws

Glue the screws onto the name plate

Glue the name plate onto the plaque. DO NOT leave full glasses of water on the floor in your work area for husbands to trip over! You can probably see the water damage in this photo from this very accident happening and water spilling all over my plaque. My heart broke a little but I carried on.

Draw some Bongo horns

Cut out one Bongo horn and trace another and cut out to make a set

Next, draw and cut out with an exacto knife two ears

Now you should have your horn and ear sets cut out

Paint you horns and ears

The cardboard will likely warp when painting but not to worry, it should dry flat again. Try to not coat thickly with paint to prevent this

Cut out your synthetic fur fabric for the ears

Hot glue the fabric pieces to your ears

To give the ears and horns some depth I chose to cut out some cardboard and layer it between the ears and horns. Label the pieces for your left and right so things don’t get confusing. Then place the horns upside down and trace where the ears will be affixing to them. Draw lines with a sharpie so you know what size and shape to create your cardboard layered spacers.

Once you have the shape and desired thickness make the cardboard spacers by gluing together

Next match up your spacers with your sharpie lines you drew earlier so that you won’t see the spacers after the costume is assembled

Use your headband(I recommend a wide headband for better stability and strength) and trace where you will be affixing to the horns. Remember to flex the headband as if it were on your head to create this outline so it’s accurate. Then score(NOT CUT!) the sharpie line of the headband. Then cut with an exacto knife down the middle to create two tabs.

Now attach your ears with a glue gun about a 1/4″ above the headband sharpie line.

It should look like this now

Next take your horn/ears and headband to a mirror and adjust accordingly to where you would like them to sit on your headband. This part is tricky because your horns/ears will change position when the headband is flexed to go around your head and unflexed off your head. With the headband on, take a sharpie and on either the left or right of your headband draw a line on the outside to mark where one set should attach. Take the headband off your head and using the sharpie line as a guide hot glue either your left or right set of horn/ears by their tabs onto the underside of your headband.

It should look like this now

You’ll notice that you’ll need some stability for the horn/ears not to flop backwards at this point. Not to worry, we have you covered. I don’t know about your headband but I ran into a pickle on this step. I tried to hot glue the ears and horn to the outside of the headband. It didn’t work because of the non porous surface of the headband and the glue popped right off with the slightest pressure. SO…

Instead grab some felt. (Notice in this picture how the horns look to far apart? They will move into correct position once your headband is flexed and on your head;)

Cut two strips of felt

Tug the felt strips down and in between your horn/ears and the headband. Gently flex your horn/ear set to allow you to hot glue your felt onto your horn/ear side(cardboard side)

Next, firmly pull the felt strips around the underside of your headband and hot glue to cardboard so there is no slack

When you turn over your headband it should look like this from the front. You can hardly notice the felt strips and now your horn/ears are securely in place on your headband

Here are the finished pieces to your costume

Grab some make up and black lipstick to paint your Bongo markings on your face

Gasp, another Bongo creeping on Halloween night at the museum!!

NHM Bongo diorama

What polar bear?

Gulp!

Museum staff

It’s the end of October and that means it’s time for pumpkin carving, ghost stories and Haunted Museum at The Natural History Museum. The museum closes to the public and members enjoy an amazing evening full of Dia de los Muertos arts & crafts, curatorial collections, and spooky festivities.

I was thrilled that this would be my first day to volunteer at the museum! All you had to do was come dressed in all black and attend the information session beforehand where you would be assigned your roles for the evening.

Liz the Volunteer Coordinator must have remembered my interest because I was scheduled at the curatorial table, “Gravestone Taxidermy”! Thanks Liz! I was super excited I would have the opportunity to meet Master Taxidermist Tim Bovard of NHM!

There was expected to be more than 800 members in attendance. The Taxidermy table was located in the museum’s foyer that was decorated with marigolds, hanging paper papel, painted donkeys, and skeleton gobos on the ceilings. The foyer also had snacks and refreshments, a live Charles Darwin, and a DJ spinning ghoul tunes. I caught Darwin tapping his foot to an EDM track when it came on. I wonder what he’d think of that music if he were around now?

At our table Tim had on display a variety of specimens and Taxidermy supplies to educate guests about the art and process. Before the guests arrived I had time to ask Tim any questions and learn about the specimens.

It seemed a lot to memorize at first but after I observed Tim talk to a couple of guests I felt confident to do the same. Since everything is still fresh in my mind I’ll tell you all of the specimens. There were a bunch of cats; a fishing cat, serval, jaguar, cheetah, mountain lion, leopard, snow leopard and a bobcat skin. For birds we had; a red collared parrot, California quail and a raven. Among other animals was a horned lizard, California ground squirrel, cast rattlesnake and a coyote jaw.

The supplies to demonstrate how Taxidermy is done consisted of a small wrapped baby possum, sculpted foam body, glass eyes, artificial animal jaw and a foam nose. Oh! Lets not forget the cute stuffed animal cat to educate kids on the difference between Taxiied and “stuffed” animals. Tim would ask them, “Which one looks more realistic?” They always got the question right:)

What most guests don’t know about the museums diorama is that the habitats are all man made. Any plant life must be painstakingly be recreated by hand. Tim explained the process he used to create leaves. First he would vacuum mold a real leaf and then cast sometimes thousands of leafs and have to hand cut and paint them. He had out on the table an example of a fig that he’d cast out of foam and had yet painted.

Our “Gravestone Taxidermy” table proved to be a hit with kids and adults! Everyone liked stroking the animals and people were fascinated to learn how Taxidermy is created. I had the best time on my first day volunteering with Tim and really enjoyed talking to the guests, especially the kids. Kids are my favorite!