Make Your Own Halloween Crystal Ball

Directions

1. Thin some white craft paint with a lot of water, it needs to be really runny. Then pour the paint into the glass ball and swirl it around only one half of the bowl (front to back, not top to bottom.) The idea is that a projector can send light through the back and project onto the translucent front. Just as long as a decent portion of glass remains unpainted and clear.
2. Super glue the glass ball onto the underside of a bowl. We used an old black ceramic cereal bowl we’ve had forever and it happened to be black. It was the perfect base. This step is optional but I think it gave it a more realistic look.
3. We purchased this digital projection file from AtmosFX.com. They have the best Halloween projections and we have several of them. My husband found the best ones he thought would look good in the crystal ball and pieced the file together in Quicktime to make a continuous loop. Then he practiced with the projector and the crystal ball so he could get everything just right. This is projected from the back onto the painted portion of the ball.
4. To make it really look like a Halloween crystal ball, we set it up outside on a little table with a black tablecloth. Then we got a skeleton and strapped it to a chair behind the table. The skeleton had a robe on which made it easy to stick the projector inside the skeleton and hide the projector. We cut a hole in the robe for the projector lens to shine through. It took some finagling to get it just right, but once we got it, it was so awesome!