In order to replicate Santa Claus, Jack Skellington has a sleigh crafted so that he can deliver the ‘toys’ to families. The sleigh is made from a coffin and skeleton reindeer and is led by Zero, Jack’s ghost dog, whose nose lights the way (a la Rudolph).

To create the sleigh, first I created the coffin and runners out of foam…

…and painted them.

To create the skeleton reindeer, we started with some Halloween prop cat skeletons (one of which we found in a bin in front of our neighbor’s house labeled ‘free’).

To transform the cat skeleton into a reindeer skeleton, first we had to chop off it’s tail (yikes!)

To add the antlers, I drilled holes in the plastic skull of the cat skeleton, and inserted heavy duty wire (three strands) through the holes.

From there I twisted and arranged the wires to recreate the shape of the antlers.

The reindeer skeleton’s nose is longer than the cat skeleton’s so I added some cardboard to elongate it.

Then, I covered everything with duct tape to secure the pieces (and give a texture to the antlers).

I then painted the skeletons with white spray paint.

We had purchased a Zero toy which was the right size. It had a fairly flimsy wire hanger, and if I was going to mount this to a board, I needed to reinforce that, so I used the thick wire that I had used for the antlers.

I drilled wire-sized holes into the base of the head, inserted the wires and then used a hot glue gun to secure them together.

After that, I attached a small piece of wood to that collection of wires using duct tape. This created a small platform which I could use to mount to the wood supports.

Then it was time to put it all together! I bought an 8 ft. board and painted it black (to match the color of our roof) and mounted the coffin toward the back using some 2X4 pieces as supports.

I then mounted the reindeer and Zero.

For the reins and harnesses, I used strips of brown fabric and zip tied the fabric to the skeleton reindeer.

And the team was ready!

With the help of my friend Brian Hamilton, we got the sleigh up on the roof and secured it so that it looked like Zero was beginning to take off from the roof.