Any sugesstions for a blow-off dust which would be grey/black and can be blown off without affecting me or the audience.

I'm thinking of dusting an old leather book with something like flour or talcum.
Then remove the book from a wooden chest and slap or blow the dust off.

Some cobwebs would be good too - How could I make them?

This is just for an occasional performance, not a nightly affair. Thanks in advance.

Brown hairspray, usually used by punks. Seems funny, but it gives an interesting aspect of age.

Keep the powder from incense, its smell old too!!

I've used gray foundation theater make up before. Not the cheapest solution, but it looked really good.

How about putting a scoop or two of your whole bean coffee into your grinder and going beyound espresso grind. Then mix one part powdered coffe with two parts talc.

The cobwebs can be made inexpensively out of stretched out cotton balls.
Doug

Please don't blow real or "stage" dust at your audience if they are close enough for it to settle on them and breathe it.

Many people have allergies.

Not such a good idea for you to be breathing it either if it is talc or worse. Talc stays in the lungs, "stopping" when it can go no further, presumably in or approaching the small breathing structures that oxygenate the blood. (Yes, that's true for home use of talc baby powder too!) Seriousness depends on cumulative degree of exposure of course. But in this polluted world, we need to minimize exposure to all potentially hazardous substances.

I think powdered aluminum would fit your needs...
Slim & Krista
http://www.unitednuclear.com/chem.htm

Oh yeah - thanks sanscan.

Blow the aluminum dust off the book and into the flame of the mystic candle. One Big woosh and we have the firemarshall shutting us down.

Seriously, thanks for the ideas. I like the cotton wool cobwebs and incense powder. But I wont be blowing in anyones face.

Mystically Yours...

How about using dust

i would not use flour if i was you when flour becomes airbourne it can have the same affect as alli powder in other words BOOOOOM (do not try this as a cheaper vertion of flash powder it has to be airbourne and is compleatly unpredicterble) one draft and your a real mess or worse your audience is>

When did the original poster
say anything about fire?
Slim Price/sanscan

Do you relise quite how volatile airbourne flour isyou don't have to have a candle on the stage or someone smoking, orthough both of could potentially trigger a pyrotechnic event a good static spark is sometimes enough
I mentioned this becuse someone mentioned useing flour which 9 times out of ten would not cause a problem but under the right conditions its deadly (thats why flour sylos are always well away from residential areas)
now knowing this and not metioning it imagine how id feel if he posted here in a month "ive lost my audience did, thay fly past your window?"
heres a couple of examples of flour explosion stuff I found here .

I have one suggestion for adding spider webs to the book...

I run a haunted house and own a web shooter which adds web to anything, these webs pass EXTREMELY close examination - http://www.btprod.com/ - The $90 price tag might put you off for a product that merely ages your prop, but if you know anyone who runs a haunted house, they may already own one.

There are numerous designs on the internet for building your own "webshooters". it's basically a model airplane propeller mounted on a drill in front of a modified margerine container which holds cold vulcanizing fluid. Similar effect can be produced if I am remembering this correctly with rubber cement, but I wouldn't recommend that oweing to the flammability of rubber cement.

-Sean Covernton

some fine ideas mostly, the safety stuff is real, if aluminum is powdered fine enough, it can ignite on exposure to the moisture in the air! If this is really only occasional use, set it on a shelf or stand, you may need to add the cobwebs, but the dust (at least in my neighborhood) will get there by itself!. Besides, with good misdirection, it need not really be there, if YOU beleive it is! and react accordingly, your watchers will "see" it too! a few strands of that lovely poly stuff for webbing from halloween will stick well to the corners or rough surface and can help add to the effect with the brown hairspray for age mottled leather (I have a well aged Shakespear edition that already looks like what you are describing!) to gain additional age marokings on this, if it is leather, add a few drops of dilute coffee or tea, and some plain water here and there, and let them soak in and dry out on their own.