Halloween Decorations

The Halloween spirit is out in full force around here, and a few weeks ago the Halloween decorations were put up at our house. I thought I would share with you some of my favorites.

This little ceramic jack-o-lantern I got at Bath & Body Works probably 2 or 3 years ago. It sits in our bathroom and it has a little tea light in it.

I love holiday hand towels. It's a thing. In the bathroom I have a green one with spider webs on it.

This is a wreath I made maybe 2 years ago. It is just a grapevine wreath that I had Jeffry spray paint black, and the snakes are from Wal-mart. They were $1 each I think, from the toy section, and I had Jeffry spray them also. The spiders came in a 2 pack and were in the Halloween section. They weren't more that $5 for both. Once everything was painted and dry, I just attached it all with black wire. Piece of cake!

Of course I had to share my love of  window clings. These are from The Christmas Tree Shoppe. Super cheap!

This is actually a card that I got from Flying Seal Press over on Etsy. The frame is from Hobby Lobby.

Once everything was put out, it allowed me to see where the "holes" were, and I came up with a couple craft ideas to fill in those holes. I give you the Spooky Bat Garland.

This project was a little laborious, but was still easy. I googled "bat template" and printed off one that I liked. I cut it out, and then traced it onto a piece of card-stock, so it would be easier to trace onto the felt. I think I used 4 pieces of black felt. I used a pen to trace the template, which showed up nicely on the felt when it was time to cut them out. I got about 5 bats per sheet of felt. 

Cutting them out was the worst part, just because it took a little bit of time, and you have to pay attention to what you're doing. Oh yeah, I used glow in the dark puff paint to dot on some eyes.

 

I picked this ribbon up out of a clearance bin, so they were like 60% off their original $1.99 price tag. I ended up deciding on the black ribbon so there wouldn't be as much contrast. I cut the entire spool into about 2" lengths. ( I totally eye-balled it) Then I just hot glued the ribbon onto the back of the bats in the middle of the wings.

And that's it! Super easy, no sew bat garland. I use small clear command hooks to hang it. I actually leave those up year round because I hang other holiday garlands there, and you don't even notice them when there is nothing up.  I love how it came out!

Oh yeah, here is the bat template that I used. I actually ended up enlarging the largest bat just a teeny bit. I used PowerPoint to do it so you don't even need anything fancy like Photoshop. 

And of course I would be remiss if I didn't share my all time favorite Halloween decoration:

And I couldn't not take a picture of Ruby in her matching collar either.

Happy Halloween!

Happy (Almost) Easter!

So today has been pretty crazy, I didn't get to take my break at work we were so busy, and I stayed 45 minutes late! But here are a few Easter decorations that I made for the apartment this week and last...

This was the inspiration for the first project, I found it on Pinterest and it's from here

I used a Fiskars paper cutter that I had to cut the strips. Most of the paper is from Hobby Lobby, the pink gingham paper is from JoAnn's. The frame, blue paint and ribbon are from Hobby Lobby too. Hobby Lobby has a great selection of glass-less and backless frames that are nice for projects like this. I used double sided tape to stick the strips to paper that I cut into the right shape by tracing the inside of the frame on it.

The blue paint I picked out is a great color I will admit, but I was being cheap and bought the least expensive brand, and it literally took me the.whole.bottle to get good coverage. And the frame was primed white to start with, not even super porous wood. I still love how it came out though.

The second project was actually inspired by something I remember making back when I was a Girl Scout. Yup you read that right, I was a Girl Scout. Here is a tutorial that tells you how to make the string eggs, although instead of using some crazy concoction, I used a mixture of white glue and water. I'm pretty sure that's how we made them before, and they've been Easter decorations at my parents house every year since so they're going strong. 

Here they are drying. They are in a plastic seedling tray.

And here's the finished product! Sorry about the crazy sunlight.

 I also used a cheap pack of balloons, so the shape of some of them is a little off, but oh well. I used the leftover ribbon from the frame project, and its hung with a piece of bakers twine strung through the back. Oh yeah, and the embroidery floss is from JoAnn's. They had some really pretty variegated colors. I got the larger skeins, and each skein did 2 eggs. Also, a very handy tip, which she mentions in the link above, if you just drop it into the glue mixture it will tangle like there's no tomorrow. I had the best luck if I first wrapped the thread into a ball like you would yarn. Its tedious, but so worth it; then you just drop the little ball into the glue and it spins and coats itself as you wrap the balloons. They took about a good 24 hours to dry, and it was nice to have the plastic tray because I bet if you let them dry on newspaper they would stick. Wax paper is an option too. It took me a while to decide how I was going to connect the eggs to each other, but I ended up just using hot glue. I used it pretty sparingly, and tried to keep it just on the strings so there aren't noticeable clumps of glue.

And an Easter bonus:

Easter Mani!!

I used Sally Hansen Salon Effects nail stickers that I bought on clearance at Kmart last spring...

They were cheaper than a bottle of polish!

So there you have it, a whole smattering of Easter updates! Anyone else making anything springy?