Creating With The J's: The Halloween Mantel

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

The Halloween Mantel

It seems I have this crazy inability to sit and do NOTHING!!! Seriously, if I sit still for too long, I think I start to twitch. Maybe someday...

It took the better part of a week, due to all that life has to offer, but the Halloween decorations are up! I'm pretty sure I'm in love with them too! You ever have one of those projects that just seems so much better than others? I think this year's Halloween displays fall in to that category for me.

The mantel started out a little something like this.

I wasn't happy. It didn't matter how many times Jim told me "The mantel is looking good Babe."

I WASN'T HAPPY.

The skeletons spent the night on the mantel, while I thought about their future and that of the mantel display.

There was a trip to the local Goodwill store to see what sort of inspiration might be found there.

This is what we came home with.

That trip must have done the trick.

That awesomely (yep a word!) tacky orange, but very classic, pumpkin did just the trick, or is it a treat?

Isn't the gargoyle cat cool?? She is super cute and with a black cat in the house it seemed fitting.

She was a little scuffed up in places, poor thing. A makeover came a few hours later!

Alright back to that awesomely cool plastic pumpkin.

It reminded me of a picture I had "pinned" onto my Halloween board on Pinterest.

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I did look around while I was there. There is plenty of vintage greatness to be found at

Very Merry Vintage Style. I hope you will stop in and give a look around and maybe even say hello.

I knew I had a couple other similar pumpkins. I was hoping I could pull something similar to this off.

What do you think? Is a mantel full of these pumpkins for you?

To each their own, but I'm going for it! Or as close as I can get with the 3 pumpkins I have!

But first...spray paint!

The Gargoyle kitty needed a makeover!

Much better don't you think?

Ah, the joys of spray paint!

Between Jim spray painting the gargoyle and the thought processes going through my head for the dining room, I broke out the spray paint the next night. I wish I had taken a photo of my hand with spray paint all over it. I didn't, but my left hand was showing several shades of spray paint. /sigh

Armed with some spray paint and bunch of "stuff" to paint, outside I went.

I started with two pumpkins from the dollar store and an empty Magic Eraser container.

Magic Erasers might have score a few more points, because their container was suddenly cool for more reasons than just functionality.

Yep, black spray paint....

Lots of it!

Even these frames would receive a spray paint makeover.

All of them had been sitting upstairs feeling completely and utterly unloved!

Do you like my fancy pumpkin drying rack?

Hey, it worked!

Alright, back to the mantel!

The other thing I did was download this cat

He came from HERE.

There are plenty of great printables at Free Vintage Digital Stamps!

He would find a home in one of those frames that were spray painted.

When it all went on the mantel it looks like this!

I played off the black and orange theme.

I think it worked out pretty well.

The only thing that wasn't in the Halloween stash was the fabric draped across the front of the fireplace and that came from the dollar store. Have I ever mentioned the dollar store is right next to where I work????

What? You want to know what I did with the Magic Eraser container?

Okie dokie, lets have a looksee!

I downloaded some more graphics. This time from the Graphics Fairy. If you haven't been to this blog, YOU NEED TO GO AS SOON AS YOU ARE DONE LEAVING ME A COMMENT!

(and not a moment sooner!)

This is the direct link to the post with these graphics.

I have been wanting a project where I could download something from her blog.

I'm hooked! I will be thinking up more projects for her graphics. I love looking at them.

I used some adhesive to put the Web of Spider of label onto the Magic Eraser container.

This meant there needed to be some cobwebs and I added a little spider from the card stash to help accent the container. What do you think? You think the big spider coming out of the container is too much?

Here's another look at the whole mantel.