Over the years we have gone crazy when it comes to Halloween decorations. If you’ve followed for a bit, you know this!
It all started with my husbands building of the Monster Box. It was really fun and terrified all the children.
Then we built our little buddy Roger.
But last year we really went all out. It might be my favorite year up to date even taking into account this year which leaves much to be desired! Last year, Ella decided she wanted to be an alien abduction for her Halloween costume so we just ran with the alien idea and Olive was an alien too…
And this obviously meant we had to build a UFO for the yard.
And surprisingly it wasn’t too hard! So while this isn’t a perfect, includes all pictures tutorial, it’ll give you the baseline steps and pieces you’d need if you wanted to try to make your own!
Here’s what you need to make this happen if you are ready to take on making your own UFO!
Foil Insulation Rolls
Two Patio Umbrellas
Silver Duct Tape
Clear Umbrella
LED Lights
Glue Gun
Zip Ties
Drill
Alien Mask
Foam Head Form
Fog Machine
You can start by opening your two patio umbrellas. We did two black ones, but you can do any colors honestly and they don’t need to be new so search facebook marketplace and craigslist. You won’t use the bottom portion of the umbrella pole, but we ended up opening the umbrella and cutting the pole with the pin inside the hole to make sure it stays it open. Don’t throw the poles away, because we ended up using those as a very questionable stand for it
The top (and bottom if you choose) will be covered with the foil insulation. We rolled over the parts of the umbrella, traced the shape it needed to be, cut to size, and then hot glued the pieces to the umbrella.
Once the top was covered, we zip tied the outer umbrella edges together.
Next we covered all creases with silver duct tape.
Then we lined the edges with the LED lights. We used the ones on the roll so they were easy to wrap around and we secured with duct tape as well.
After that we grabbed the clear umbrella and shortened the handle to fit inside the top of the patio umbrella. There’s typically a hole it will fit into. We chose to put the mask on the head form and create a small hole in the top of the mask for the umbrella handle to go through. You can push it through styrofoam head and then into the top hole of the umbrella. We should have zip tied this on too, but we didn’t so learn from our mistake.
Creating the stand is really the hardest part. I can’t tell you a good way to do this. But somehow you will want to attach three legs for it to stand or “land” on. Just make sure it is stable. We ended up using the ends of the poles by drilling holes in them and then zip tying them to the underside of the umbrella.
We also tried to add weight to the bottom umbrella to make sure it didn’t fly, but it did anyways. If you can anchor it into the ground, do that!
So in the end, it took a day or two to build it, but it wasn’t super hard. AND it’s a showstopper! Especially at night! Our LEDs could change colors so we did that and we added a fog machine which we sat in the middle underside of the UFO.
To round out the decor, we added skeletons in white paint suits, an alien symbol on the house, aliens in the windows which I just traced and cut out of foam board, and do not cross tape around the yard.
It all turned out so well! And everyone loved it!