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My Halloween Mantel on a Budget

05
Oct 2010

I’m stepping out of my comfort zone here with you today. :)

I am showing you an actual place in my house that I have . . . gasp . . .decorated.

I know. That’s not my thing. I’ve never claimed to be a decorator.
I’m a  . . . well I don’t know what I am but I know what I’m not.

But I’ve decided to be brave and show you my Halloween Mantel.
We’ve never really decorated for Halloween before,
just some pumpkins and things scattered around for Fall.
But there is soooo much inspiration out there that I got caught up. 

I knew I wanted to do something fun, but our budget doesn’t run to lavish holiday displays.
So fun and cheap were my criteria.
I think I did pretty good but I’d love to hear what you think.

Some disclaimers -
1. It’s Cloudy in So Cal. So these pictures are a combo of flash and not much sunlight. It goes against everything I believe about blog pictures but I didn’t have a lot of options.
2. Did I mention I’m not a decorator??

Brace yourself. There are lots of pictures here.
Click on any you want to see better for the enlarged images.
I’ve included “before” pictures when applicable so you can see where I started.

Ok. Down to specifics.

My favorite thing on the mantel – the mirror.

I started out with a 3.00 mirror from a Garage Sale.

I taped off the mirror and spray painted the frame black.
I left it kind of splotchy because I didn’t want it to look too new.

I found an image I wanted to use behind the mirror – from the Graphics Fairy of course.

I flipped the mirror over and printed out an enlarged image of the woman for sizing.
I sprayed Oven Cleaner on the back of the mirror to remove the silvering.
If you’d like the whole tutorial for this process, click here.

 After 4 applications of oven cleaner, the center of the mirror was clear.

 Girls (and guys) PLEASE wear gloves if you do this.
I did not listen to Mr. F.T. even though he nicely suggested it.
As I mentioned on FB – my fingernails are jacked up after this. Stained dark brown.
From who knows what chemical.
Learn from my mistakes. ;)

 I did listen to one of Mr. F.T.’s suggestions though. He recommended adding a skull image over the woman’s face to make it a little spookier.
(Though I don’t think he used the actual word “spookier”.)

Here’s the close up of the mirror with the skull image added.

 I have one of those little battery tea lights flickering behind this at night. It looks great!

Karen from the Graphic’s Fairy had generously allowed me to share the altered image with you.
Click here if you’d like to download her face with the skull added.  

The Candlesticks I picked up for $5 for all of them at a garage sale too. Spray Painted them all glossy black.

The Vase of Skulls are dressed up Dollar Store Items. My daughter glittered the skulls up for me.

 I put them in the hurricane with netting at the bottom for filler and glittery ribbon in a big bow.

 The bowl of black roses started out like this . . .

 I spray painted the bowl silver and the roses black.

Inside the frame is a crow I traced onto black scrapbook paper and framed over a pink background. (It had to have pink!)
The crow came from here. I gave him a rhinestone eye for a  little bling. 

I got the idea for the metallic pumpkins from Roo at Nice Girl Notes.
The pumpkins and big flocked spider (sorry Cindy) came from the Dollar Store. Yeah!
(Cindy has an intense hatred for all things flocked)

I found a couple of things at Michael’s I couldn’t live without.

The Terror This Way sign was 4.60 on sale and the kitty was the most expensive thing at 7.00. But really. When you see a giant purple glitter kitty how can you pass that up????

The mice running around the bottom are silhouettes from Martha and the black runner thing came from the Dollar Store too.

So my mantel cost $27.00 not including what I had on hand.
And we all know that stash materials don’t count right?

 

I was going for Disney rather than Night of the Living Dead.

I want to hear what you think!!
Advice for a decorating newbie is much appreciated. :) 

Update:

My Mantel made the Top 10!!!! (Insert Happy Dancing)

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Category: Holiday, Home Decor  Tags: , , , ,  92 Comments

Bowl of Eye-Balls

28
Sep 2010

Back in the beginning with Flamingo Toes was a baby blog and there were 11 of you reading along I made these cute little Fabric Decor Balls.

Not that I think the blog’s all grown up now. Maybe we’re in those awkward pre-teen years. ha.

One of the things that I loved about them was that they were easy to change out for different seasons. And guess what – it’s time to change them out!!
Yes. I’m fickle.

So today I’m showing off my tutorial for these super easy Eye-Balls.

Here’s what you’ll need to make your own spooky set:
(Yes. I know they’re not really spooky. This is about as Halloween/spooky as we get over here.)

  • plastic balls (I bought 2 packages of whiffle balls from the Dollar Store)
  • white fabric for the strips (I used 108″ wide muslin I had, 24″ of it.
    So if you use regular 45″ fabric you’ll need about 1 2/3 yards)
  • more white fabric – 8 1/2″ x 11″ piece
  • freezer paper
  • printer

I originally tried printing out the eyeballs on paper, and then wrapping them, but the paper wouldn’t lay flat and kept creasing. Not cute. And slightly frustrating.

I have been wanting to try printing on fabric for a long time – and decided this would be a perfect project to give it a go with. I had seen it done somewhere but I don’t remember where now.
I was nervous about it but it was so simple!

Start by cutting a 8 1/2″ x 11″ piece of both fabric and freezer paper.

Iron the fabric onto the shiny side of the freezer paper. Press it down as flat as you can, so you don’t have any wrinkles or bubbles.

Find some eyeballs that you like. Mine came from here but I saw some cool realistic eyeballs at the Graphics Fairy this week too.

******  UPDATE: I have created a PDF with a set of Eyeballs for you!!
Click here to open the PDF  *****

Place the paper in your printer so that the fabric side will print as it runs through.
Mine went through really easily. I had a few bubbles so you can see a couple small lines in the eyes – but that was it.

Peel off your freezer paper and cut out your eyes.
You can see that it printed out pretty clearly!

For the strips to wrap the balls with, make a small slit in the bottom selvage edge of the fabric, about 1″ away from the cut edge.

Grab both sides of the slit and tear the fabric. This will give you a nice even strip and the ends will be a little frayed. Perfect for that “mummy” look.
(Your first strip might not be even if the cut edge wasn’t even. Which it probably wasn’t. Does it seem to anyone else like fabric stores don’t cut in straight lines anymore??)

Tear enough strips of your fabric to cover each ball well. I used 2 - 1″  x 108″ strips for each. So if you have 45″ fabric you’ll want 2 1/2 - 1″ x 45″ strips.
Ack. Enough with the math.

Start wrapping the ball, criss-crossing the fabric for coverage. I wrapped one strip completely before adding in the eyeball.

Lay the eye on the ball (does that make anyone else think of Runaway Bride? No? Just me then.)

Wrap the remain strip around the ball so that it covers the edge of the circle but not the pupil.

Tuck the end of the strip under one of the wrapped pieces so it holds. I did not use glue – because I’ll do something else with these for Christmas.

But if your kids (or husband) are going to chuck them around – add a spot of glue. I’ll probably regret the no-glue thing.

Wrap all your little eye-balls. I did 12.

And you’re done! Really – you can’t get much easier. No Sew. No glue. I love it!

I put all the little eyes in my bowl with some gray moss and some spiders and roaches I picked up at the Dollar Store. Just to try and up the spooky factor.

 I think they’re so cute. If you can say that a bowl of eyeballs and spiders is cute.

I’m entering this in the Halloween CSI contest!!

Visit thecsiproject.com

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Category: Holiday, Home Decor  Tags: , , ,  84 Comments

Fabric Decor Balls

03
May 2010

I’m sure you’ve seen all the great decor balls around that everyone and their sister is making right now. I’ve been wanting something for a wire bowl on my side entry table for some time, but I couldn’t settle on a style of ball to put in there. The twine, beans and other materials are all so pretty. But in the end I finally decided to go with some color and use fabric.

Here’s a small tutorial in case, by some wierd chance, you have missed all the others. :)

I started with a jelly roll for the fabric (40 strips of fabric rolled together, each strip is 2 1/2″ x 45″) and three packages of Dollar Store wiffle balls.

 

I only used 1 strip per ball, so I had most of the jelly roll left to use on something else. For each ball I cut the 2 1/2″ strip in half, then those two halves in half again. So out of each strip I got 4 strips, 5/8″ x 45″.

I started wrapping the ball, criss-crossing the fabric to cover it.

When I’d get to the end of one strip, I added the next, making sure as I went around that the ends were covered.

I used all four strips around the ball and when I got to the end of the last strip I dabbed some Elmer’s Glue on the end and tucked it under one of the other strips.

I know that might seem like not much to hold it on, and when my family starts chucking them at each other, as they of course will :), I might regret it. But here’s my reasoning. I’m a rather fickle decorator. So the odds are, at some point in the next 6 months, I will probably want a different fabric on there, plus I don’t have the storage space to make up different sets for all my whims. So I’m going to be able to change out the fabric fairly easily.

Here they are again, with all the different colors:

Now for confession time. Up until Saturday I had fabric Easter eggs in this little bowl. Shocking, I know. I left the green moss that the eggs where on because it allowed the balls to sit a little higher in the bowl. Do you think it looks to “Easter-y”? Would it be better without the moss – in which case I think I’d need to make some more. Any opinions would be helpful. :)

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Category: Home Decor  Tags: ,  21 Comments
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