Romp in the Swamp Louisiana Halloween Party - Fangtasia Vampire Bar

I'm still working on these, but I haven't forgotten! I wish I had gotten better photos of our basement on Halloween, but so it goes. We already had a built in wet bar with a goofy sort of gothic archway, so it seemed a perfect fit to create my version of "Fangtasia," the vampire bar from the True Blood series.



My main tool was a TON of red gossamer that I ordered from www.giantpartystore.com. I cut it into sheets the height of our walls, folded over the top 2-3" and stapled it to form a little channel. I strung each panel on red curling ribbon stretched across the walls between 3M hooks and bunched it together to achieve my desired fullness.



I pretty much covered all the walls and bookcases that I could with 50 yards of this stuff (that was all my budget allowed!).



I also changed all of the light bulbs out in favor of red party bulbs, and used a couple strings of red Xmas lights and red coil lights (the latter were on sale for $4.99 at Menards!) which helped to create a creepy red glow. Don't you love the random rock wall in our basement too? I blame the 60's.



For my "Fangtasia" signs I did an image search for the logo and blew it up on 11" x 17" paper for a pattern. I used an x-acto knife to trace around the letters on black tagboard, and mounted it over red foil tissue paper to give the effect of glowing like neon. I glued the whole thing to some re-purposed foam core, and used some red mardi gras beads as additional trim. I cut cleanly enough that I was able to use the black "Fangtasia" letters that I had cut out as a second sign, which I mounted over the "entrance" to the bar area.



I also did a google image search for hi-resolution pics of the main characters who work in the bar, and printed them on 11" x 17" paper to make posters for the proprietor:



*swoon!*

Also the Manager on Duty and Employee of the Month:



As part of their marketing campaign, HBO had created a bunch of faux advertisements for the TruBlood drink that the show gets its name from - I figured those would be right at home in a vampire bar, so I printed a bunch in color and scooped up frames at the Dollar Tree to post them in:



I scattered them around on the bar (we just had all the booze and mixers set out, no bartender).



Of course you can buy a TruBlood officially licensed drink from HBO, but $4 each + shipping is a bit out of my price range, so I made my own "v-shots" from tiny glass vials:



In the show, vampire blood (v-juice) is a potent drug, and seems to be trafficked in tiny vials - I got mine from AxMan surplus store and ran them through the dishwasher a few times. They were filled with a mix of sparkling pomegranate juice and strawberry or raspberry pucker. I didn't get to try any, but they were all gone before the night finished, so I'm guessing they were okay.

Of course there were a million other little details I had hoped to add, but regardless I think I got the point across, and fans of the show at least appreciated it :) The clean up was also pretty easy as I just untied the ribbons holding up the gossamer and switched the lightbulbs back.