Dexter Party Part Two

Welcome to part two of my three part Dexter Party! Today I am talking about a few of the decor items that I put together. Check back tomorrow to see all of the finishing touches and ideas for even more possible additions that you could use at your own party.

At Dexter's day job as a Blood Splatter Analyst, he often uses yarn to show the path of the blood spray. To make mine, I dug out my husband's old music stand and just removed the top part that actually holds the sheet music. Then I cut a bunch of 3' strands of red yarn and taped one of the ends together to make it easier to feed them all through the little hole in the top of the stand. I tied off that end then pulled the loose ends over to the wall and attached them with little pieces of tape. You can see a pic of Dexter using his here.

If you or one of your kids ever played an instrument, chances are you already have a music stand laying around your house. If not, you can find them at most garage sales for less than a buck.

At his night job as a serial killer killing serial killers (now that's a morbid tongue twister) he has a kit with a bunch of different knives and other instruments needed to complete his murder. If you want to make a more accurate replica check out this awesome post. They went step by step through every item in his kit and gave a description of each one along with a link to where you can purchase a similar item. The total estimated cost for the replica is about $700 though and I was trying to put this together as cheaply as possible.

For the case I grabbed some black scrap fabric, laid my kit on top and cut it to about the finished size that I needed plus 5" on the height. Then I hemmed up the sides, folded the bottom up a few inches and sewed it on the sides to create a pocket. After that I marked where all of the items would be and sewed a line up that part of the pocket to hold each item in place. 

For the killing tools I found a three piece knife set at the grocery store for $13. You could probably also find a set at a thrift store and spray paint the handles silver if they aren't already. The syringe we had picked up at a surplus store for about a buck. The scissors are supposed to be stainless steel poultry shears but I didn't have any and I figured you would only see the handle anyway so I used my fabric scissors. To complete the kit I grabbed a small hand saw from the garage.

A couple of years ago we picked up this specimen slide box at a church garage sale for only 50 cents! You can find one pretty cheap on Amazon as well. This one wasn't exactly like Dexter's trophy box but it had the sides with the cut outs for the slides so it was a good starting point. 

Dexter's trophy blood slide box is a wooden box with a single row of slides and hinges on the top instead of the sides so it took quite a bit of reworking. The top and bottom of the old box was made of cardboard so I found some scrap pieces of wood that were about the right size. For the sides of the box I just ripped out the wood from the old box, removed the black paper that was covering it and cut it down to size. Then I glued the sides in place and stained all of it dark walnut. Then I re-positioned the hinge on the back of the box. I used the left and right slide holders and sanded down the slots so that they would fit two slides pressed together.

I found the slides at the surplus store for around $5. The blood drops are acrylic paint. It dried up a bit and pulled to one side so it may have turned out better with some of the fake blood that you can find in the costume section. 

You can find photos of a more accurate reproduction here. That page is a couple of years old and when I checked out the store that they said would be selling it there wasn't anything there so I guess they don't carry it anymore. It was selling for almost $200 though and I doubt many people would have that much money to spend on a prop anyway. That link has some good photos to go off of though. Or you could pick up this Dexter Coaster Set that is only $20 and looks pretty cool.

That's all I have for you today. Check back tomorrow for the final installment of our Dexter party!

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