Craft Confessions | Halloween Decorations

Growing up, Halloween was always fun, but never very exciting compared to Thanksgiving or Christmas. Something happened in college--fun parties, perhaps--that completely changed my view, and now I'm a full-blown Halloween groupie. My love for the winter holidays hasn't decreased (I'm a December baby so of course I'll always like that month), I just get the added joy of eagerly looking forward to another holiday!

I've had these simple decorations up since the beginning of September, which was before I started this blog, so I didn't think to include pictures until now. The inspirations for my jar labels came from House of Smiths; if you haven't already checked out Shelley's blog a time or two, get on it! She has lots of inspiring tutorials for revamping old furniture and making a house a home. 

Here is what the whole package looks like next to our front door. This just also happens to be our drop-off zone for mail, so excuse the papers. 

Unfortunately, I couldn't wrestle enough with the blinds and lighting to find a good way to take this picture without a flash. So to give you a better view, I brought the displays up to my mini-studio. Here are the displays on the left. I purchased the mini skulls from Michael's, the "Goblin Droppings" are caramels on a bed of corn husks, and the candlestick is a reuse of an old chair. (If I get the time I'll show you how I got 14 very cute candlesticks from one $10 chair.)

This is the display on the right, nestled against our kitchen counter. The bottle is a fun treasure my husband had from the Scottish festival (it held root beer), the cool squash is called a patty-pan squash, and the framed art was a five-minute project. I free-handed a very crooked tree silhouette and traced a crow silhouette from a photograph, then layered it all on a piece of orange cardstock. This may be my favorite project because I can easily switch it out for every season with paper scraps I already have lying around. To make the candle look a witch-ier, I let it burn for 30 or so seconds, and intentionally tilted it to drip down the sides (that's how I got the black streak you can kind of see on the left side). The huge drip down the side of the candlestick was from letting the candle burn too long unmonitored, but I love the look, so it was a happy accident!

I can't believe Halloween is only five days away! What fun plans do you have for the evening?