Halloween Door Decor!

Here's your sign!

Boy, you can tell how short I am taking this picture! Follow the directions below to make this fun sign for your front door!

I wanted a fun and not scary decoration for my front door, and I think that this did the trick.

My expression that I have is 22 by 4 inches.

http://tamarag.uppercaseliving.net

Are you a dumpster diver? I am! I got this wood while I was visiting a friend. She is still having some new home construction in her neighborhood. As I was leaving her neighborhood, I noticed this bin filled with scrape wood that was in the dumpster. Whee! So I grabbed a few pieces...it's going in the trash anyways! I am just up-cycling here people!

So I measured my wood to be 24 inches

long and got the saw out!

Being that I always want to do things for mostly free, I try to always use what I have around.

I had this black and white paper left-over from some other crafts. Now, it was not the right size, so I went with a mosaic Mod Podge look.

I tore up the paper in random sizes and glued it on with our dear friend, Mod Podge.

When the paper was dry, I gave it a all-over coat. When that was dry, I went over

the edges of the wood with black craft paint.

I still wanted a bit more. I like the old looking Halloween...whatever that means.

So I wanted to antique this. I gave it a "dirty wash". I went over the whole piece with watered down cream paint.

Then take a paper towel or old tee, and wipe it down. You are removing most of the paint here. You want to move fast here because you don't want it to dry.

That looks better!

Then I cut around the expression and placed it on the wood when everything was dry.

I used some old wire that I had to tie up the sign. Then to add another fun touch, I used some crepe paper and got out the glue gun. I flipped it on the back side and glued a fancy edge to it. I am really happy with the way it turned out!

 Here is some more decor at my front door. I have light that I am going to put in the lanterns for Trick or Treater's. And all the garland and the crows are from the Dollar Store.

Not just any old suite case!

A while ago I posted that I had gotten a suite case at a garage sale and was really excited about all of the things that I could do with it! My mind was just going crazy with all of the possibilities! And I got for just $2! It still had the tags on it! Now, this was intended to be used just for decoration. I am guessing that she got it at Ross, or another home decorating shop.

So here it is before:

So cute!

Here is what I went with....

I made it into a doll bed for my little girl! Yes, she did have the pink plastic one already, but this so much better! (I am going to give the old one away)

It was so easy to make! I had to ask DH to give me a little help,

but anyone can do it!

I got the wooded legs from Home Depot. They were about $2 a piece. Not a bad price I thought! I just added a few coats of brown paint and the sealed it. Any home craft paint will do the trick!

He drilled 4 holes and we added the washer and the nut. The legs come with screw ends on them.

I had this fabric left over from a euro pillow sham. And her room is all brown and pink, so it was perfect. I just cut it to shape and put in there. I was originally going to get some thick foam and cover it with fabric. But then the dolls would have just sat on top and not in it. She likes to close it when they go to sleep! I think that I might make a pillow to go with it.

She loves it!

BOO to you!

Want to learn to make this fun sign? It's SO easy and a great bargain! I got this idea off of

www.eighteen25.blogspot.com

Supplies:

~Wood letters from Hobby Lobby. You could do EEK too! They are .99 each

~Paper from Hobby Lobby

~Frame from Wal Mart. They are only $3 each and are wood

~Craft paint and glitter. The glitter is from Hobby Lobby.

Lay your letter out and give it a couple of coats of paint.

I choose green because of the green glitter. I watered down some glue after the paint was dry.

Then I gave the letter a glitter bath. You may or may not want to have your kids help with this! You may be screaming EEK yourself! Let this dry and shake off the excess glitter and save the extra for another project!

When everything is dry, about 24 hours, you then want to glue your letters to the paper. Just cut out your paper to the size of the 5x7 frame.  I let this dry flat overnight so that the letters did not slide off of the paper. Take apart the frame and put the paper "in front" of the glass. That way it 3 dimensional. After Halloween, save these frames! You can do this same idea for other holidays!

Like: JOY, I (heart) U, USA...lot's of other ideas!

Furniture Update with Stencil

I had this piece of furniture for a long time, and it needed a little update. I painted it a brown color a while back, and one day I walked by and had this idea to add some hydrangea's to the doors. I already had the stencils and paint. There are some many choices out there. You can go to the craft store and use a coupon and pick up a design that you like!

First, you want to make sure your surface is clean and free from dust. Choose your design and get your paints ready. I use a tint, but you can use any craft paint or stencil paint.

The idea is to really remove as much of the paint as you can from your brush. The best way to do this is with a cotton rag. Pour a small amount of paint to a plate. Gently dip the tip of your stencil brush into the paint. A stencil brush works best just because of the stiffness of the bristles

and it keeps it's shape.

Here is what my rag looks like as I am removing paint from the brush...this could almost be art in itself! :~)

After you are sure that you have removed most of the paint, I test it out on my wrist. Yes, I said wrist. This is just one last test to make sure that the paint is removed.

The point here is that we are just "floating" in the color. This is different than the traditionally way to stencil.

Here you see the stencil up. For some reason at the time I did not have blue tape. A girls gotta do what a girls gotta do! Anyways, start from the edge of the design. You want to "hug" you the opening of the stencil. Do not stamp! I make a gentle figure eight when I stencil. Going from the outside to the inside of the design. Remember that a lot of your color is off the brush. You can get a much softer

look with the technique.

For the top of my door, I did not want the whole flower, so I taped off what I did not want. Again, hug and swirl that color in. This gives you a chance to add other

colors within the design.

Here is what the finished flower looks like. I did use a metallic paint on the flower, so it's hard to get a good picture of it.

Again, it's better in person. There are different shades of green on the leaf and different colors on the petals....just hard to get all of that with the camera. There are a million places that you could do this. Headboards, cupboards, tables, all kinds of possibilities!

Dollar Store Halloween

I just LOVE the dollar store. If you don't shop there, you should start! When you are walking around, have an open mind to the endless possibilities! I am not a big fan of going crazy for Halloween, but I do like the vintage look that you can create. Take these pumpkins! Now, they are not perfect, because I had the help of a lovely 3 year old assistant. So, I decided that I needed to get over it begin perfect, and let her have some fun with glitter! Who does not love glitter!

Here is the pumpkin...with my little helper. It was orange, but I hit it with some black spray paint. You could use craft paint too. It was actually blackboard paint...that was all I had. I thought it would be fun to use chalk on it, but then that bottle of glitter was just calling out my name.

We used a glue stick here. I was trying to get perfect circles. You could use glue dots too! The glitter is from Hobby Lobby. They have it in a ton of different colors too. It's not as fine as the Martha Stewart glitter from Michael's, but I think this works great for this project! Plus, it's a much better price!

The second pumpkin we did some stripes on. Pretty fun!

I am working on my display, so when I get that all done,

I will post more pictures.

Score! At a garage sale!

I am always on the look-out for books for our office-library. We have shelves that wrap around the office. Though we have filled it with lots of books, there are still empty spaces. I have checked out Goodwill, and other thrift stores, but they are just too pricey for my taste, even for used books!

Look at this garden book I got today for .50!

It was $30.00 book!

Another option for used books is the Library! I got a whole set of black/hard covered TimeLife books. They are all on different locations around the US. But the best part is that they are black. The librarian even bargained with my on the price! Oh yeah!

A treat for those closet doors!

I just can't leave closet doors with nothing on them!

I see a blank canvas!

I ordered these damask expressions from my Upper Case Living expressions. The best part is that it's not permanent. I know for sure that my hubby was not going to go for painting my daughters closet doors.

It's in Chocolate Brown...and so divine!

Now, it came with 4 large and 4 small designs. I really went back and fourth on what to do with the smaller ones. I thought about cutting them in half, and placing them all over the doors for one large pattern.

But, I then just decided to leave them plain.

So, now what to do with my left-over pieces...

My window treatment above my bathtub! I had a friend that gave me this left-over.

She had a customer that changed their mind about the treatment. Yeah for me!

So I added the trim with a hot glue gun. And then I used the extra damask to fill in the shade!

Check out my site at:

http://tamarag.uppercaseliving.net