October 25, 2010

Halloween Decor and Crafts

Well, it's now or never. This is my first post on the amazing Chicken Babies blog. My name is Hayley Neil and I am Erin and Emily's sister in law. I married their goofy little brother John four years ago. We have a two year old little girl named Grace. I am a stay at home mom and I love to design, sew and decorate. It has been exciting to start involving Grace in my creative endeavors. She is still a little young for a lot of things but I try to always give her even a small task to feel involved. I hope it will at least instill within her a love for creating and beautifying.

I have never really decorated for Halloween before but have been wanting to start so that I can make the holidays special for my family. This is the year! Holiday decorations can be expensive and they are only on display for a short time so we decided to make ours this year. I love the eerie, spookiness of Halloween so we went that route.


I scored some great vases, candle sticks, and a ceramic owl at a local thrift store. Then I spray painted everything! The candle sticks were painted a black matte and then sprayed on a really cool spray called Krylon Webbing Spray. It only comes in gold but it pretty much shoots a web of paint onto the surface. It gave the candlesticks a really unique look. Then I sprayed a light coat of black matte over the top once more to just dull down the gold webbing. Complete the look with black and orange taper candles.

The ceramic owl was just painted with a black gloss spray paint.

The vases were sprayed with another really cool Krylon product called Looking Glass Mirror-Like Paint. (I split the cost of all the supplies with a friend.)
You spray this stuff on the inside of any glass surface and it gives it a mirrored look on the outside. Amazing! Then I sprayed a black gloss paint unevenly on the outside so the mirrored would show through but it would look dirty, old, and creepy. The roses are just fabric red roses that I painted with a black matte.

Holidays are not complete without a wreath on the front door so we made our spooky Halloween version. The wreath was just a dry, natural looking brown wreath that I picked up from the thrift store as well. I sprayed it black like everything else and added some black ribbon and black crows from a craft store. It is definitely creepy and I think I read somewhere that a black wreath signifies death in the home. Which is a kind of perfect for Halloween but a bit too scary for kids so I kept that bit of information to myself when Grace and I were making this.

Obviously a two year old is too young to be doing any spray painting so I just let her help me set everything up to paint it and then asked her opinion on each piece as I was going. She was thrilled to be a part of "mommy's project" for Halloween. Then we did a more kid-friendly project. She helped me draw and cut out the shapes for our Halloween garland. We cut everything out of glitter craft foam. We made a pumpkin, skull, bat, witch hat, ghost, and black cat. She loved helping with the cutting and gluing the best.

I hope to keep expanding on our decorations each year and having Grace be more involved. It has definitely made October and the build up to Halloween a lot more fun and memorable.

3 comments:

  1. Hayley, you are awesome! I love your crafts!

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  2. Super creative. You are the queen of cheap (meaning inexpensive, but still fabulous) chic. Love it!

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  3. Wow, Hayley. I didn't know you re-made all those things from thrift purchases! Very clever, and classy, too.
    Liz

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