Crafty Things: Easy Halloween Wreaths and Others...

A couple of years ago I saw a wreath for Halloween in a Pottery Barn catalog. It was just a simple, but very striking, black feather wreath. Of course, the price they wanted for this wreath was ridiculous.

So I decided to make my own.

The wreath in the Pottery Barn catalog didn't have spooky "eyes"...that was something I added myself.

I don't have any pictures of the assembling process, but it was very simple. I bought a styro-foam wreath; I think it was a small to medium size wreath, like an 8" or 10" wreath. Then I bought a black feather boa. The eyes are just small styro-foam balls with google-eyes glued to them. Using a hot glue gun, I put hot glue all over the face of the wreath and then just placed the feather boa on top of the hot glue, going around and around the wreath, pressing it lightly into the glue, until the wreath was covered. I poked a wooden floral pick into each styro-foam eye and then used the wooden pick with a dab of glue, to anchor each pair of eyes into the wreath.

I used a small length of wire on the back to make a hanger for it. Very simple and it cost me only a few dollars to make!

This is another relatively simple Halloween wreath project. This one I made several years ago. I bought some dark red faux roses that were on clearance at Michael's. I chose ones that were 'open', and not buds. Next I bought a flat wooden wreath form and some Halloween patterned wired ribbon. I chose this cobweb and spider pattern and also a plain black organza, but a plain black taffeta or satin ribbon with a white edging would look pretty too. I cut the roses off the stems, so I just had the 'head'. Then I laid them on newspaper and spray painted them with black spray paint to give them a spooky 'dead' look.
I sprayed them several times so that virtually none of the red was showing and they were almost solid black (in this picture, the wreath is about 4 years old and some of the black has faded, so I'm going to refresh the wreath this year!)
Then after the roses were dry, I used hot glue to glue them to the wreath. I used a small loop of wire on the back to make a hanger, and then tied the ribbons in a bow and also glued them to the top of the wreath.

The same black spray painted roses were used for this fun and easy Halloween decor, which looks perfect on the mantel of my parlor fireplace. I have a number of these silver mint julep cups from my 2007 wedding. We had bought dozens of them for centerpieces that I made for the tables at our wedding reception. I had some leftover black spray painted roses from my wreath project, so I wrapped several of them together with floral tape to make a little bundle and then placed them in the mint julep cup. I also had bought some Halloween patterned ribbon that had an adhesive back, which I wrapped around the mint julep cup near the top.

Here's a picture with three of them on my mantel. I always change out the green candles in the candleabra for black candles also.

Fall leaf garlands can also be spray painted black and wrapped around porch railings, stair railings or anywhere else to give you a spooky look. I always buy a couple at the end of the fall season when they have all the fall stuff on clearance. This was about 2 years ago, when I only had a couple of them. I have more now and I keep adding so that eventually I will have spooky garland over all the railings and even a few up the wall. The "lanterns" that you see are just glass hurricanes with black aquarium gravel in them, and orange candles. Someone actually stole these orange candles from my porch one night; they left the hurricanes, but took the orange candles. Very weird. I have white candles in them now and nobody has stolen the whites ones!

You can't see the black garland in this picture, but this was my Halloween/fall porch display for last year. I have two 'funkins' that I cut scary faces in and I re-use these every year. I also have three real pumpkins that I hadn't carved yet.

Here they are lit.....my two 'funkins' and two that I carved. The third pumpkin some stole off our porch and smashed it in the street before I even had a chance to carve it.

I love to use those paper patterns to make the really cool designs! I'm pretty good at sketching, so I can make my own scary faces, but I still love to carve some using the purchased patterns. My carved skull turned out really well even though it took forever!!

Thanks for stopping by!
I hope that I've inspired you to make some of your own easy Halloween or fall decor!