My Halloween Mantle

This year was the first year I've decorated for Halloween, well other than pumpkins outside.  I'm usually just a Christmas decorating fool, but this year I couldn't resist.  Let's just say Pinterest...there's just so many ideas and inspiration.  It just motivates me to put my thinking cap on and create!  Not to mention all the wonderful fellow bloggers with endless amounts of creativity that inspire me as well. 

I will start off by saying that I recently painted my fireplace again, and oh boy I'm not very sure about it.  When we bought our house (built in 1984) seven years ago, the fireplace was red brick.  Not just plain red brick, the multi-colored kind with an oil rubbed finish!  And it's not a little fireplace, it's ginormous!  Floor to ceiling.  So when we bought the house I painted it.  Well a few years of little boys using it as a play area and race track for cars it needed to be freshened up.  I painted our walls throughout the main part of the house tan several months ago (I know..your saying "Tan? That's so 2 years ago!" But I had to do it, I like the color and it doesn't show dirt from the boys and their dirty hands!  So naturally I needed to pick a color that went with the tan walls for the fireplace (cream colored trims & doors, burgundy couch, espresso furniture, and chocolate brown everything else).  Of course I chose a mocha color!  Of course (rolling eyes now)!  Needless to say it's kinda dark and a LOT of brown in my main living area now.  Seeing as how I painted it by hand with a brush, I am leaving it for a couple months to see if it grows on me...if not it's going cream & the base is staying mocha (that way the boys can still play on it and not ruin it). 

So here's the good stuff.  The Halloween mantle display.  I do have a great mantle at least, it's 6ft. something so it's great for displays. 

First I painted a frame black for my Halloween Subway Art.  Then roughed up the edges.  I have had these round finial pieces for about 13 years from when I worked at Joanns from a display.  I have always loved them and never used them.  I decided the frame needed something so I added them with hot glue to the corners. 

I also glued the frame to some cardboard I spray painted white to make it larger in size and add some lightness to my fireplace.  All the little pumpkins were a $1 at Walmart and I spray painted them cream and then just added some brown acrylic paint to accent them a little.

I have tons of these large glass jar/vases on hand for parties so I filled them with spanish moss and placed a ceramic skull from Michaels, cost $2 I think (it was just white and I added the aging to it with acrylic paint).  The silver "boo, eek, and spooky" signs were also from Michaels for like $3 or $4 bucks each.  The spooky one was already silver, but the eek & boo were orange and purple.  So I spray painted them with a valspar metallic silver paint (love that paint!)  They match almost identically.

I found these cute little glass bottles at walmart.  Unfortunately they didn't come with corks and I didn't buy any so I just hot glued some round wooden balls I had on hand.  I filled one with colored water as my "Love Potion No. 9" & the other is "Spider Legs" and it's filled with black electrical wire cut up into 2" pieces to look like spider legs!

I covered some books with wrapping paper and created book labels for them.  These two are "How to train your toads & bats" and the other is a book of "Love spells".  I don't do scary so I had to make the titles PG and appropriate for the kids. 

 
These two books on the other side say "Poisons - From a to z" and "1,000 uses for spider legs".  I made a little graphic in picnik for the frame that says "along came a spider".  The frame was $1 from Dollar Tree.

Inside the fireplace (which we don't use for anything besides candles since the boys have such bad asthma) I put the large round owl tray I made about a month ago.  I found these cute little plastic appetizer plates at Fry's for $2 each and put them on plate stands with glass vases filled with spanish moss and a white husk pumpkin behind them.  And note the fake tealight candles, our boys and cats love candles...so we go the route less likely to lead to a house fire!  HA!

 
These skulls were also from Michaels and are just plain paper mache which I glittered then sprayed with a clear coat so the glitter doesn't linger on my fireplace mantle I just refinished for the next year.  Besides I needed some sparkle!

Lastly I created this banner to hang under the mantle. Hung it on some twine and viola!

I really liked the way it all turned out.  I love the black & white theme I chose to go with and the few added silver things that brighten it up a little.  I hope you all enjoy it too.  Happy decorating!