Concrete Brain Halloween Decoration ($10)

My family have never been big Halloween fans but every year we turn on our porch lights and are ready for the trick-or-treaters that will come. My sister and I will normally carve a pumpkin or two and that is all the decorations we have. This year I wanted to make something out of concrete because honestly I'm really into that material right now. It is cheap and easy to use.

I plan to make a few more brains to lay out over the porch come Halloween.

Step 1: Tools & Materials.

1. Quickcrete concrete mix (I used Quickcrete 5000 and cost about $5)

2. Bowl and Spoon

3. Water

4. Cooking Spray

5. Mold

This project coast me a total of $5 since I already had the concrete mix but if you were buying both items it would probably cost $10-11 bucks. So pretty cheap for a cool looking halloween decoration.

Step 2: Mixing the Concrete.

So mixing the concrete is pretty easy. One of the reason I like working with concrete is because it is such an easy material to use. When you get a bag of concrete it weighs about 80 pounds so be prepared for that. I brought my dad with me to home depot since I knew I wouldn't be able to carry it.

Scoop a generous amount of the mix into a bowl. If you end up not having enough it is easy to quickly mix up some more. Once you have the mix ready start to add a little water. Don't add a lot right away, do it in small amounts! You want to make sure that eventually all the powder is mixed in. My mix ended up being a little soupy since I added too much water too quickly. The consistency that you want your mix is like a pancake batter.

Step 3: Preparing the Mold.

I found this fun jello mold in the Halloween section of Target. It was $5 so I decided this was the gonna make an awesome decoration for outside. Since this mold is meant for jello and not concrete it is made of thin plastic. So in order to use this mold multiple times it is important to spray the entire surface with cooking spray. This will allow the concrete to release from the mold after it dries.

Step 4: Pouring the Concrete.

Pouring the concrete is pretty self explanitory. What I did was pour a little bit at a time and then pound the table/mold to bring the air bubbles to the top. This is an important thing to do otherwise you will end up with a concrete piece full of big holes. Once the mold was filled to the top I pounded out the air bubbles for about two mins. You'll see in the image that I didn't quite get them all out but I think it looks ok.

Since the mold was an odd shape and made of thin plastic I decided to place in a box to help it keep the shape. Not sure if it really made a difference though but I like to think that it did.

The concrete needs to stay in the mold for at least 20 hours. It will be fully cured after 24 hours.

Step 5: Enjoy Your New Brain!

I think this brain looks pretty cool........creepy but mostly cool. Overall it was just a fun project and thought the kids might get a kick out of it on Halloween. It took me 15 mins and $5 to make this brain, so it is pretty easy on the wallet. I think in the future I might try to make an inverse of the mold and turn it into a candy dish.

This project could easily be changed many ways to make it better. Im ok with having the stone look but you could easily spray it or if you are looking for a bit of a challenge you could airbrush it to look more realistic. The possibilities are endless!

Let me know what you think in the comments and if you make one for yourself.