Last year I got a great deal on Cosmo Cricket's Halloween line at Peachy Cheap. I got ribbons, blackboard, cardstock stickers, rub-ons, and stamps for like $15! I knew when I got it wanted to make something (not a scrapbook page), so I stashed it away (I got it in October).
Fast forward to this summer, and the Haunted papers were like 40% at Two Peas. So I bought a sheet of each pattern & again stashed it away, figuring I didn't need to stress until September. Then all of a sudden it was the END of September, I hadn't even thought of decoratings yet! So last weekend I grabbed Olivia & Abbie and ran over to Michaels to pick up some chipboard (oh, I'm sorry, they call it paper mache...whatever) letters. And they didn't have ANY! What?! Last year they did. Maybe I'm blind (my optometrist wouldn't disagree!). So rather than keep searching, I shoved the girls back in the car & ran over ot Joann's. Fortunately they still carry them...and they were on sale for a buck off! Woo-hoo!
The first thing I did was paint the sides & back of each letter black. Then I traced each letter on to the patterned paper I wanted. Really, I should've done the tracing first so I wouldn't have to stress about getting black on the paper, but oh well! The paint was dry, it was just me stressing :)
After the paper was cut out, I modge-podged the paper to the front of each letter. Sometimes my tracing/cutting wasn't super great, but that's okay! That's what sandpaper & black paint are for: See, once the modge-podge is dry, I sanded the edge of it down (if the paper overlapped). Then I took the black paint & ran it over the edges of the entire letter. No big deal.
I let each letter dry at this point (aka, I took a shower!). Then I came out & started playing with the embellisments. I knew I wanted to tie ribbon on the P (above), and I somehow wanted to use the bat blackboard (above as well). The black O was a bit blah, so I used a skeleton rub-on in the corner. I added other rub-ons to other letters as well. Then I applied one coat of modge podge on top of each letter (and rub-on) to seal the deal. This time I was smart too: I didn't put any on the bottom so it won't stick to my shelf! (Yes, this happened with my Christmas letters last year!)
After the modge podge was dry, I started playing with the blackboard cut-outs & leftover scraps of paper. I added a cat face rub-on to the bat, some distressed stickles to the black to add some bling, etc. I had a LOT of fun playing around! (And I made a haunted house too, I'll share it later.)
I'm so happy with how it turned out! The only disappointment is that the P won't stand on it's own. David offered to make some sort of stand, but I found that leaning them against the wall works too (there's glass on the top of this chest that is about 3/4" out from the wall, so there's a nice little spot for the letters to fit).
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