Spooky, Crafty + Vintage Halloween

*image courtesy of Cali Lee*

I love vintage Halloween items! One clue that I'm getting old is that I think things to myself like, "they just don't make 'em like they used to," and that sentiment is certainly true for Halloween decor. So I've spent some time looking around the internet for some vintage inspiration. This website, Jason Wilcott's Vintage Halloween Pages is pretty great. On their Halloween Folk Artists Page, I discovered my new favorite artist working in this genre, Cali Lee. Take a look at Cali Lee's gallery page. Her work is so awesome!

We started our Halloween crafts early this year. These jack-o-lanterns were carved many weeks ago and have long since decayed. My son is a little obsessed with mustaches at the moment so we had to make a jack-o-lantern with one.



When I saw these skeleton potato stamps on the Martha Stewart website, I just had to make them. I didn't bother with the template. I just sketched on the potato with a pencil and then roughly carved it with a knife. And after I finished carving them we stamped them on some acid free paper coloured paper I had cut out a while ago and kept around for crafts. A couple of days later we went for a trip to the dollar store to get some more craft supplies and I happened upon those adorable mini clothes pins. Then I found a length of ribbon left over from last Christmas and whipped up this cute little Halloween bunting. It was just my style, quick and easy.



Of course Martha's always got some vintage Halloween inspiration on her site. Here is their Indoor Halloween Decorations Page. Even though we started early, as usual, I had hoped to do more. We've been so very busy and the kids are still at an age when they just don't have to patience for big projects. But let me tell you, they love Halloween! We've taken out pretty much every book about Halloween from the library that we could get our hands on! I think I may have to make a post about our favorite Halloween kids stories.



We made a hanging ghost for our front window which matches the Ghostie Cozy we made last year from Heidi Kenney's project. He was really quick and easy to make, so I made a jack-o-lantern too.



I had some white fabric hanging around that I couldn't stand so I was happy to find a purpose for it. I took a paper bag and stuffed it with paper from the recycling bin and just rolled the bottom to close it up and crunched it into a ball. I took my white fabric and draped it over the bag and used a needle to thread string through the fabric and the bag to hang up. Then we cut out the simple shapes of the mouth, eyes and a tear and glued them on with fabric glue. Once I hung the ghost, I trimmed the edges of the fabric so it would drape nicely. It's very effective, requires no sewing and took half an hour tops.



And this bat and witch are from an 80's mobile we found at the thrift store. It's fun to hang this in our window. This would have been just the style of Halloween decor that would have hung in one of my classrooms as a kid.



Hey, check out this huge mushroom our friend brought over for us!



We fried it up in some butter, salt and thyme. Usually I love fried mushrooms but this one was a little strong for my taste. My son said it looked like a big brain. So we pretended to be zombies chopping, frying and eating brains for dinner.

I hope you are having some fun with your Halloween decorating.

♥ Andrea ♥