The Eerily Elegant Fireplace Mantel
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With our kids at the perfect age for Halloween I've slowly begun decorating more and more of the house. However, if I'm going to have decorations up for more than a week, I want them to be something that I'll enjoy as well as the kids, s0 this year I'm pulling together the Eerie Elegance Mantel. I used things I already had and then made the really spooky Skull Candlesticks for some drama...which are a lot easier than they look.
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SKULL CANDLESTICKS
MATERIALS
Foam Skulls
Inexpensive candlesticks
Latex Paint
Silver Spray Paint
Drill
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STEPS
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Selet a bit for your drill that's the same diameter as the cup of your candlestick.
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Drill a hole all the way through your foam skull. For the smaller candlestick, I drilled straight down through the center. For the larger triple skull one I drilled the first though the center and the other two at an angle so they would stack a little more interestingly.
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Slip the skull over the candle stick. Depending on how nice of a fit you get (and depending how particular you are), you can go back and use caulk or wood filler to fill any gap between the skull and the candlestick. For the taller candlestick, I found that when I stacked the three skulls they actually came out taller than the large candlestick I had, so I just hot glued a separate individual candle cup I got at the craft store on top of the existing candlestick.
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To paint them, you want to brush on a coat of regular latex paint first. Spray paint will actually eat away at the foam. Once that has dried, you can go back and spray paint them silver. You're done!
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For the rest of the mantel I did really simple things....
Printed a few spooky black and white photos and popped them into frames I spray painted black.
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Painted a few inexpensive foam pumpkins high gloss white and silver. For drama I perched them on top of silver candlesticks we already had.
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For height I took a branch from the back yard, put it in a clear glass urn and attached a few crows. To go with that I replaced the usual artwork with an old peeling window frame.
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To cap it off I grabbed a dollar store Happy Halloween banner, spray painted it black, did a coat of spray adhesive and...
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covered it with glitter!
Eerie Elegance....check!.
