A Little Halloween-y

September Writing Challenge - Prompt #18:

Deal

Have I ever mentioned that I love thrift store shopping? Specifically at Deseret Industries, the thrift store ran by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints? 

Well, it’s true. I love me a good DI find.

Ever since I made my haunted houses a few weeks ago, I’ve been on a bit of a Halloween decor kick. Actually, come to think of it, it started last year when I found Ludwig. It’s so exciting to find things at the DI to get creative with. After I made the haunted houses, I started thinking it would be fun to make some decorations for my living room wall. I had a vision of replacing my kids’ photos with some scarier portraits. 

I found a few skeletons and skulls at Dollar Tree, and then I bought a few cans of spray paint, and some… well… I don’t know what you would call them… “frames & such?”… from the DI.

Frames & such

I spray painted the frames & such black and then wiped them down with some gray acrylic paint mixed with water (to give them a more dusty/matte look). I also spray painted all the skeletons white (they were originally more tan in color) and then wiped them down with a mix of black paint and water to distress them and accentuate the details. 

I never really know what I’m doing. I just make it up as I go. 

I took knives and scissors to the skeletons and skulls to cut them up how I wanted. It was all sorts of morbid, sawing faces off, hacking up limbs… but in the end, here’s what I had: 

Here’s what the wall looked like before:

I’ll probably fiddle with the arrangement over time just to see how it looks in a few different ways (it’s what I do), but I think it’s a pretty great Halloween set-up for this year. Here are the before and after photos of the frames & such:

Scotty had a good laugh about this one

This one is my favorite because the skeleton looks like he’s smiling, and it reminds me of the standard school photo

While I was looking through frames & such at the DI, I came across a bunch of rose covered frames that I loved, so I bought one of them. I thought it would make such a nice frame for a skeleton portrait, so I came up with this:

For now it’s on the bookshelf:

I had to chop off the skeletons’ feet and one of the arms. Then I bent the arm so it could go around the shoulder of the other skeleton, and I pieced it back together and glued it. 

I had a whole lot of fun making these! 

While I was at it, I also revamped a wreath I found at DI last year: 

Before

After

I spent nearly 4x more money on the ribbon than the wreath (wreath was $2, ribbon was $6.99). Luckily, a $9 wreath is still a deal! 

Normally I wait until October 1st to decorate for Halloween, but since I’m making decorations, I’m just putting them out as I go because I don’t want to put them away just to get them back out again in two weeks. I’ll be sick of them by Halloween, for sure! Six weeks is too long for any holiday. 

One problem with decorating my home is that I don’t have a lot of surface area, so I don’t have many places to put knick-knacks. With my thrift shopping adventures of late, I’ve ended up with too many Halloween decorations and nowhere to put them, so I’m trying to figure out where I can display Ludwig this year as well as my new friend: 

The Demon Mermaid

Then

Now

I’ll keep you posted…