{"id":4008,"date":"2025-10-29T19:12:51","date_gmt":"2025-10-30T02:12:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.albertzone.com\/halloween\/?p=4008"},"modified":"2025-10-29T19:12:52","modified_gmt":"2025-10-30T02:12:52","slug":"a-log-for-a-frog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.albertzone.com\/halloween\/2025\/10\/a-log-for-a-frog\/","title":{"rendered":"A Log for a Frog"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

One of the iconic images when one thinks of the Muppets is of Kermit sitting on a log, playing a banjo and singing Rainbow Connection. We wanted to have this be a part of this year’s house, so I set about figuring out how to have a log appear in our front yard. I considered looking for a real one, but soon realized that would be too heavy to move around. I had always wanted to create a fake tree, so I took this as an opportunity to do that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I found this tutorial<\/strong><\/a>, which was really helpful and guided my process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I started by buying a cylindrical cement form from my local hardware store (can find them at Lowe’s or Home Depot).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I was going to need to sit on this log, so I needed to reinforce the area where I would be sitting. I constructed a wooden frame that fit in the tube and placed it in the middle, where I would be sitting. I then added a piece of wood for a ‘seat’ and another one for a base.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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After that, I added cardboard ends to seal off the tube.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The cool part for me in this was this next step\u2014using spray foam (Great Stuff) to create the shapes of lines of bark. This was a great way to get realistic and organic looking bark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Once it had dried, I used a saw to shave down the rounded outside surfaces of the Great Stuff to more accurately simulate what a tree looks like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In the aforementioned tutorial, the artist recommends coating that shaved-down layer with some Durham’s Water Putty. I skipped this step, but in hindsight, I think I should have done it as I think it would have helped make the end product look more realistic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once I had my bark shape, it was time to paint. I painted everything tan, then did a dark wash (so that dark color gets into the cracks and crevices, and followed up with a drybrush pass of that original tan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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One of the iconic images when one thinks of the Muppets is of Kermit sitting on a log, playing a banjo and singing Rainbow Connection….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4007,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[385],"tags":[21,19,31,30,392,397,22],"class_list":["post-4008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-385","tag-build","tag-design","tag-halloween","tag-how-to-make","tag-kermit","tag-log","tag-paint"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.albertzone.com\/halloween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.albertzone.com\/halloween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.albertzone.com\/halloween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.albertzone.com\/halloween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.albertzone.com\/halloween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4008"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.albertzone.com\/halloween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4008\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4009,"href":"https:\/\/www.albertzone.com\/halloween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4008\/revisions\/4009"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.albertzone.com\/halloween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.albertzone.com\/halloween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.albertzone.com\/halloween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.albertzone.com\/halloween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}