Tuesday, September 7, 2010

How To : Vintage Halloween Garland

Before you say anything I know! I know that Halloween is months away. Two to be precise, and to celebrate I thought I would post my first Halloween tutorial! I love Halloween, I love the costumes, the parties, the trick or treating (Which I did off and on until I was twenty!)the decorations and of course watching Wednesday get excited about it is wonderful as well.


hanging garland


Pretty sweet right? Sorry if the photo is kinda meh, but I have yet to learn the finer art of garland photo taking. Moving on. The images were all courtesy of The Graphics Fairy. I found her site when I was searching for Alice in Wonderland Images but hadn't been back to it. When it popped up in a search for vintage Halloween images, it was a match made in heaven. I didn't need to look elsewhere because I found all of the great images. I recommend visiting her site if you haven't already.

This craft is great for many reasons. The first being it's nearly free-ness. And if you have all the materials on hand like I did; it pretty much is. The other awesome thing is the recycled content. The graphics can be printed on scrap paper and upcycled box board is used to back said images. Plus tea and jute, very natural. Okay, enough talky talky, let's get to the crafty crafty.
Materials:
Paper
Vintage images (I do provide some but you can always google more)
Recycled box board
Mod Podge
Jute twine
Black and orange ribbon
Tea bags
Black embroidery floss
Scissors
Embroidery needle


Print SheetsPrint Sheets

Click here for the first image and here for the second in a larger size that prints on letter size paper.

First things first, collect your clip art and re-size accordingly so they print out on letter sized paper. For your convenience I have shared the two sheets that I made up. Click on the links to take you to print sized copies.

cut out printed images
Once you have printed your images, cut them out.

collect boxboard
Collect your box board.

glue images to cardboard
Glue images to cardboard,but learn from my mistake, glue to printed side of boxes so that your painted side isn't slick.

steep tea bags
Steep tea bags.
dab tea bag
Squeeze tea out of tea bag and dab it on the image.

splotchy tea
If you have the patience to do this in layers, it looks really good when you're done.

Dried tea
Once the tea has dried cut out the images.

Turn and paint
Turn images over and paint the reverse side black. This took two coats for me because I glued them to the wrong sides.Don't worry if some paint end up on the front of the image, it lends to the aged look.

mod podge front
Once paint has dried, apply one coat of Mod Podge to front of image.

mod podge reverse
When the Mod Podge on the front is dry, apply a coat to the painted side.

Turn after painting
This is after the Mod Podge has dried. See how the black ink has popped out a bit and the black paint splotches look awesome. What a happy mistake.

looped end
Cut three pieces of jute twine roughly six feet long. Loop together and knot at one end. I made this knot big enough to fit over a doorknob to aid in braiding.

Braided Twine
Once you have braided the length of twine and looped the other end in a knot for hanging, you can add your ribbon now by wrapping it around the twine. I waited until after I hung the images though.

insert needle through back
To hang images on the twine and knot, thread your needle with black floss. Insert needle through back of image.

needle in twine
Insert needle through front of twine and tie to the knotted end of the image.

knot thread tightly
Knot thread tightly.

threaded closeup
Trim.

Halloween Cut Out close-ups
Close-ups of the images. I think they look fab-u-lous!
That is all she wrote! Have fun crafting!

Linking to some of these parties as well as:


And I just discovered Iron Crafter @ Fireflies & Jellybeans and it just so happens the round five secret ingredient is cardboard boxes! How much of a super awesome coincidence is that? So I am adding the Iron Crafter button to my post to be considered for judging!

28 comments:

Anji* said...

Ooh spooooky! I LOVE this, I want to make one now! I love Halloween too :)

Cassie said...

Fantastic garland!!
I cannot wait for Halloween!!!!!
=)

Kelley said...

What a wonderful project... I love the images you chose.

Have a great weekend!

Army Wife Quilter said...

i love halloween too. great project.

Amy said...

Ooooh you've got me all excited for Halloween now, what a great idea :D

KimMalk said...

Absolutely a great use of those graphics. It's much fresher than the regular banners.

Unknown said...

This is a great idea and a terrific tutorial! Thanks for joining us this week!
{Rebekah}

Tauni said...

My boys would love this :)

Sweet Bee Cottage said...

Love this idea! You did a great job and it looks properly spooky. :)

Unknown said...

This looks so fun! Thank you for sharing!

Melissa said...

Classy spooky not gory spooky.

. said...

Great job!!! It really turned out pretty...well, as pretty as skulls and bats can be. ;)

Unknown said...

what a fab look. great change to the more colourful stuff.

Rachel@oneprettything.com said...

That is so cool! I love how unique it is! I would love to link to this if you didn't mind.

PEACHES said...

BAH!!! What a great idea!!!!! And I love the tea dyed effect...I'm trying on some silk scraps right now infact. Fingers crossed they come out as lovely as this!

Krista@RustikChic said...

Really great idea! I love it. I am throwing a halloween party this year so I am going all out. This would be perfect!

Leah said...

I love this, and I'm going to make one for myself! Thank you!

Darija said...

fantastic! I love this because it meets all my criteria for holiday decor- not plastic/wasteful, little money and storage space, easy and looks fabulous.

Aimee Cotton Bogush said...

This is so cool! And beautiful in a spooky sort of way. Thanks for a fantastic tutorial and for so generously sharing the clip art pages you made. Happy Halloween!

lisbonlioness said...

I love you, pinterest. I love you so much for bringing me to this post! In fact, I love you so much I am thinking about proposing. This is quite easily the best freakin' Hallowe'en decor I have ever seen, and I absolutely can't wait for October. Thanks so much for this post!

Bat Ma'am said...

AMAZING, I'm totally making this for my Halloween party. Another cool effect would be to print the images on a vintage book page, (or any ol' book, you can use the tea staining to 'vintage-ify')

Field engineer said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
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