More Haunted for Your House

After two weeks and an unfortunate debacle with spray paint, I've finally managed to finish up some seasonal craft projects. Believe it or not, there are actually FOUR new things made for around the house. Since I decorate my house for Halloween and then separately for fall/Thanksgiving beginning on November 1st, I've separated the projects into two posts of two projects each. Handy.

I will be straight with you on these ones...not a single one of these projects started in my own little brain. Nope. Through the wonders of Pinterest, I found some great ideas that allowed me to create some projects of my own. So...while I'm sharing my results, I'm still going to be letting you know where I found the original ideas. I love Pinterest.

I originally started putting these things together for two reasons:

#1 - I needed to do some crafting that didn't involve cutting tiny pieces of felt for hand puppets. I currently have two sets of them in progress and I was getting a little fed up with all the teeny tiny clippings. So I left it for now.

#2 - I can always use more Halloween decorations. Plus, my fall/Thanksgiving stash is pretty small. That needed to change.

Then I happened on another great reason: a way to distract me away from having to put up the Bat Mobile (I still love calling it that).

Last year, I put it up wrong and tied my strings to the chandelier so that they had to be cut down instead of just being able to lift them off. Dumb. So this year I'm going to have to restring everything before I stand precariously on the ladder in our foyer to put them up. October 16th and the bats are still sitting on the dining room table instead of being hung. I'll get to them...promise...

The good news is that my laziness means projects for you to see!

Ready?

Both of these projects were done on leftover cabinet shelving that I had laying around the garage. I spray painted them and then ModPodged cardstock lettering. I would've used vinyl, but my stash is sadly low. This wasn't too much more difficult, just a little messier since I had to put the ModPodge on each piece rather than just sticking down a piece of adhesive vinyl.

Once that dried, I coated with a layer of ModPodge and let it cure over night. One last blast with a coat of clear coat and they were all done.


Project #1 : "Happy Haunting" Sign based on this one seen over at Sherri's Jubilee.

I tracked down a couple of clip art pieces for the broom and cat and cut them out using my Pazzle (a locally made version of a Cricut or Silhouette).


Project #2 : Cute creepy sign based on this Etsy shop item from Country Workshop. (You should go check out her stuff...it's really cute.)

The spray paint "incident" left some rough patches over the top. I was going to sand them back down and repaint, but decided that it looked like spiderwebs and added to the piece. I distress painted over these areas with white acrylic paint, coating the area and then wiping the excess off with a cotton ball to leave a wispy area behind. (It looks better in person...it came out a little odd in the picture.)

After that, I added on the lettering and continued with the work.

Tada! Two more pieces in my crazy Halloween decor collection. Now...I just need more surfaces to sit them on...