Halloween Mantle, Banner & Silhouette Cameos

 This is the first year I decorated my mantle/shelves for Halloween.  I blame my good friend Christie!  Tomorrow I will show you why, but I believe I've met my crafting soul mate!  Wait till you see her mantle for Halloween...anyhow, she inspired me!

So most of the stuff on the shelves I already had for my annual Halloween party for the kids, but I needed stuff for the mantle, and cheap!  

First I made the banner.  It's very easy and super inexpensive.  You just buy a couple of different patterned scrap-booking paper, usually about $.29 - $.59 each.  Or you can buy a whole pack of themed paper on sale for $9.99 at Michaels!

You measure the paper, which is usually 12x12.  Then you make 3 even marks on the top and 3 on the bottom at the 3", 6" and 9" spots.  After that, you continue to use your ruler by playing connect the dots and drawing your long lines to form what looks like 2 triangles, but turns out to be 3...one is upside down now. :)

Then you lay them all out on your floor and hot glue a ribbon to the top of each.  Super easy!

P.S.  Keep the 2 extra pieces and make mini pennant banners with them to place over a cake or as a centerpiece on your tablescape.

I also have wanted to do my children's silhouette faces for over a year now, but never made the time.  I thought silhouettes would be perfect for Halloween so I forced myself to sit down and do it even though it scared the crap out of me.  You have to use a cutting mat and an E-xacto knife to make these and that is what scared me most...I'm not a freaking surgeon!

I had each child stand sideways against my white walls.  I made sure to take photos of them going in each direction in case I wanted to change things up later.  Then I printed them out in black and white and laid them on top of black scrapbook paper, the heavy card stock type.  Then you very carefully and slowly start cutting out their outline.  In the spirit of full disclosure, I had to redo 2 out of the 4.  I wasn't happy with doing it twice, but I wanted to keep these forever so I did want them perfect.  Long story short, it ended up being a lot easier than I thought.  Glad I had a few minutes of bravery!

I also bought the 10x13 frames at Michaels because they are an odd size and were $5.99 as opposed to the $40 11x14 frames.  The only problem with that is they don't offer standard colored mats for a 10x13 so I did have to dry brush the mats with an acrylic orange paint (2 coats).

I think they turned out great!

Now I can change the mats out with different colors to go with my different holidays...that makes me giddy!

Happy Halloween!