Every year, for the 18 years I’ve had the bookstore, I have always wanted to do a Halloween decoration outside the store that was funny. On Sunday I finally achieved this goal. I am not a crafty person; in fact some would say I’m the opposite of good with an artsy project. But this weekend I was driven to create a crashed witch on a tree in front of the bookstore. A crashed witch is quite simply making it look like a witch crashed into something. I’ve always found them amusing and thought it would a nice touch for the store.
I looked up what I’d need on the internet. Witch hat, hair, gloves, cape and witchy legs and of course, a broomstick. I left work and gathered my supplies, all easily obtainable from the hardware store, the local drug store (which was very well stocked in witchy ephemera) and the craft store. Tools were gathered and my co-worker PJ was a stalwart and able helper. Plus, as we kept saying as the witch took shape, “This is fun!” Sunday was a strange retail day that afforded big expanses of time where we could both work outside as we were customer-less, then we’d get really busy, then we’d have quiet again to work on the witch.
It was a little more complicated to do than I thought (isn’t that always the way with projects), mostly because the tree was large and the staple gun wasn’t quite cutting it, so I had to go back to the hardware store, not once, not twice, but three times to get things I needed as problems revealed themselves or it became evident that I’d forgotten something. PJ tried on the witch hat, then modeled the hair and then got busy affixing them together. We then stapled it to the tree and assembled her legs. In a perfect world we would have longer legs with striped tights, but neither one of us could find striped tights, so we substituted pre-made witch’s legs that were a little smaller than we’d hope for, but still worked. We stuffed a pair of kitchen gloves with bubble wrap as well as the sleeves of the body, so she’d look real. As it took shape, there was palpable delight from both of us.
Finally, she was done. She looked great. To create something funny for folks to notice when they’re stuck in traffic at the light by the store pleased me no end. And, to make it even funnier we added a sign above her head: Don’t drink and fly.