Halloween Banner and Mantle

I made my Halloween banner using Authentique's Glowing line. It's taken me a long time to post this though because I decided to paint the tile, mantle and mirror before I decorated it.

This is how it has looked for the last 10 years.
This is how it looked after I painted the mirror, mantle and tile with two coats of Annie Sloan chalk paint, and three coats of finishing wax. One coat of clear wax, one coat of dark brown wax and a final coat of clear wax.


Now, back to the decorations! Here are some close-ups of the banner. I cut the flag pennants and pennant shadows out on my Cricut using SCAL. The ornate ovals I scanned from some CTMH Halloween felt shapes. Then I turned them into an SVG file and enlarged them for the letters. The font is a free Halloween font I downloaded.


In between the pennants are "Margie Romeny-Aslett junk bows" from tulle, pages of an old book, and bits of ribbon.

On the mantle you will notice some Apothecary jars. These jars were made from some glass jars and vases that I scrounged up from local thrift stores. Then I painted them with a watered down mixture of black and brown paint and mod podge. Then I added some labels I purchased or downloaded for free from the internet.
Here is the final out come . Also, to get your candles to look all melty, heat the tops and cool them, heat them and cool them with a heat gun. It takes about 5-10 minutes depending on how melty you want them.
I also found the angel statue and column at a thrift store, (it reminds me of some of the gravestones at Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia!) along with the ornate frame. The pictures I had to scour the internet to find. They are some of the portraits you will find along the hallways of the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland.
The broken handled urn I and decorative mirror I also found at two different thrift stores. I think the urn may be one of my favorite finds!! and I love that it was already broken. I only had to distress it a little.
And here it is -- the finished product. It has been a lot of fun to gather these things up, and to paint and distress all of them.

Halloween Paper Quilt

I used Authentique's "Glowing" line of paper for this project and followed an idea my friend Susan has used many times for framed paper art in her bathroom. Having just returned from the east coast and recently toured one of their amazing, old, historic graveyards, I wanted to incorporate that into this project along with a little bit of the feel of the Haunted Mansion, thus the rusty fence along the front.



The project really isn't that difficult, just cut any paper you like into 1 1/2" squares, ink them, crinkle them, then adhere them to the background paper (I used 12x12) and sew on it. I kind of went a little overboard on the sewing this time, but I wanted it to look a little crazy to add to the haunted look. I like the end effect. Although it is easy to do, it is rather time consuming to ink all the little squares, crinkle them, lay them all out the way you want them, adhere them, and then with the sewing, you have to turn the paper over and pull all the threads through onto the back to tie them. I think that takes the longest. But the outcome is just what I wanted! It is proudly displayed above the entrance table by the front door.