~ Annie Sloan Chalk Paint Pumpkins - Black & White with Silver Halloween Decorating!

Halloween Decorating at The Decorated House
Halloween 2012:
Come take a look at how I used some decorative goodies to decorate
our entry table for Halloween with elements
 that you probably already have!

I hope you get a few ideas to use at your house. 

Burlap. Antique Books. Metal Accents. Vintage Brooch. Mercury Glass. 

Monogram. Spiders and Webs! (make those faux)

How I used some common things to dress up the entry table:

1. Take a pottery or faux foam pumpkin
and Paint it with Annie Sloan Chalk Paint.

2. Add a large Monogram on the painted Pumpkin. 

3. Antique Books for their texture

and to use to change the height of other elements.

4. Little Crowns on Pumpkins

(chose something fun to top off your pumpkins)

5. Votive Wrapped with Pretty Metallic Paper

6. Mercury Glass!

The three pumpkins and the cakestand are all mercury glass. 

7. Burlap:

Dress up a simple piece of Burlap,
here used for a mini runner on the antique books,

with a Vintage Rhinestone Brooch

8. Unravel the ends or sides of Burlap to make a Fringed Edge.

9. Gather the Burlap after you make a fringed edge and make a circle

to put underneath -  something else to add another decorative touch.

10. Make a Stem for your faux Pumpkin with Paper Clay.

Add some fake spiders and a few webs, stir well and enjoy!

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Are you all done with decorating for Halloween? I totally understand that a lot of people don't care much to decorate for this holiday especially after the kids leave home and are on their own. If I had to just use the traditional colors it wouldn't be much fun for me either. But I love playing with black and white and silver and maybe a little bit of the traditional color. Outside, I still love seeing traditional orange pumpkins, although I don't use real ones anymore.

The mercury glass pumpkins are so pretty and I have really enjoyed using them each year for both Fall and Halloween. These came from Wisteria and were much less than the prices I've seen at other places. They are really very nice in person, and add just the right amount of sparkle!

A little trick for you to see in the picture above is using some metallic paper in your colors, for me it was black and silver, to cover an inexpensive votive candle. It really dresses it up! Cut the paper strip the same width as the candle's height, and adhere it to the glass. If you change your mind, change the paper or use it again without anything.

The large white pumpkin above is the one I made a new stem from paper clay. I simple made the new one, set it over the old one to mold it so it would fit, then took it off and let it air dry. Painted it, and glued it in place! Much better than the little stub it had before. But a crown will not fit on it now. :)

Each year I get asked about the monogram on the pumpkin. Another simple idea you could use to dress up a plain pumpkin, but it looks really great on white or black. This is a monogram that I designed a few years ago using an old letter C. I don't have the entire alphabet if there was one made, so this is not available as a digital download in my shop. Someday, I might get around to using the frame I designed and see if I can find a font that works with it.

 

The rest of the year I try to keep any spiders out of the house! I'm not a big fan of them at all. The fact that these are black and have a touch of glitter won me over for using them for that perfect little dash of spooky. Even spider webs look fun this time of year, fake ones, of course!

Antique  books, spiders, webs, white pumpkins and burlap are the elements used here to play against silver. Most of these can be used for Fall decorating as well, minus the spiders and webs and any excess dust bunnies that seem right at home for Halloween.

Pumpkins always remind us of Fall and Halloween. If you find faux ones that have the perfect shape or size that you need, you can paint them. I've posted before about how to paint the cheap foam ones with special spray paints, but I also experimented again this year with some Annie Sloan Chalk Paints. Before I used Old White, and then mixed it with some white paint to get more white with less yellow. But now they have a Pure White. I found that look I liked was to paint the pumpkins with the Old White first, then paint over it with Pure White with a heavier than usual dry brush method. This left a little darker white in the crevices. The AS Chalk Paint worked well on both my ceramic and cheaper foam pumpkins, but it took up to 3 or 4 coats sometimes to cover the awful orange of the cheap foam ones which were very bright orange to begin with.

You can dress up your pumpkins in all kinds of ways. I like adding my little pewter silver crowns. Add something that fits the top that really is something that you like! Sorry, I don't have a source for the little crowns. They were purchased several years ago.

See Y'All Soon~

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Click on any of the pictures below to shop art from The Decorated House