Even More Halloween Decor - The Dining Room

Last night I put the finishing touches on my dining room decorations. After all, I can't let the living room have all the fun!

I made a mini bunting for the hutch using leftover fabric from my mini table runner. I cut the flags a little bit bigger than I wanted them to be and then ran them through the pinker. The plate I picked up at the grocery store for $3 because I loved it. I stuck a leftover glitter skull under the cake dome and tied some ribbon on the top. I also tied a strip of frayed green fabric on the white cake stand. The piece de resistance though?

I am loving this jar! The skulls came in a little bag from the Dollar Tree. I made the label in Photoshop. The fonts I used were Trixie Plain for the typewritten stuff, Lewisham Shadowed for the Dr.'s name, and I forget what I used for the specimen number. I think you may recognize the name of the good doctor, and his lab number is his birthday. After I printed it out I used Distress Inks and a stipple brush to age it. I rolled and unrolled the edges with my fingertips until they were looking a little frayed. It's stuck on there with removable adhesive from the Xyron Sticker Maker.

This was going to be filled with green water, but the skulls ended up floating because they're plastic and it looked dumb. Also, they have tiny holes on the top and I didn't want them to get full of water and start growing mold. Yuck.

The tag is an ancient 7Gypsies one I pulled out of my scrapbooking stuff and roughed up by crumpling and smoothing it out a few times. I cut two small pieces from a hot glue stick and melted them on the tag with my embossing gun. I then sprinkled red embossing powder on it, shook off the excess, heated it once more so it would melt, then stuck a rubber monogram stamp in the mess. I left it until it cooled completely, THEN pulled it away. Result? Faux wax seal! I also made dabs here and there with an embossing pen so that I could get a little bit of random embossing powder to stick around it. I didn't want it to look too neat.

Oh, and check out the bubble bowl collection - there are now five! Hooray for the odd number!

I decided to go thrifting yesterday because I needed a stand for that plate. I also wanted a jar for my skulls since the original plan of sticking them in an old milk bottle didn't work out. They were too big for the opening. I never ended up finding a jar I liked, and ended up using an Ikea one that I already had at home. I did, however, find all this in addition to the plate stand:

The Barbicide container is getting a SERIOUS washing, and then I'm going to try to remove the lettering. I plan to replace it with a vinyl label that says "Straws" and keep my drinking straws in there. This thing is super heavy glass! I was wanting one I saw at a flea market a few months ago but couldn't bring myself to pay the $15 the seller wanted. Well, remember that Goodwill by my house that I said never ever had anything I wanted? It finally came through for me! I got this bad boy for a mere $2.99!!!

I picked up the mixing bowl and the old bottle at another Goodwill. The bottle was only a dollar and I thought it would look cool with some long twigs in it or something. The bowl was $2.99, which is super cheap for a milk glass bowl of that size! I have several of these Sunbeam bowls in the smaller size, but this is the first big one I've bought.

Finally - the bubble bowl. I saw this bowl at a Savers a couple of weeks ago and those fools wanted $16.99 for it. They must have been smoking something, because this bowl is NOT worth that much! I was so mad too, because I needed just that one more to finish my set but no way was I paying that much for it. Well, apparently neither was anyone else because I found it again last night, tucked away on a bottom shelf waaaay in the back, for a mere $7.99. Less than half of what they wanted originally! Can you say "MINE???"

On to the table...

There you see my lovely quilted mini runner. On top is a lace edge black amethyst glass footed dish that I got on eBay a couple of months ago. It's filled with glittery skulls and mini pumpkins. I've also added two milk glass urns holding some hydrangea blossoms that my husband brought me home the other day. Special thanks to one Muffy Martini who gave me some tips to get them to last a bit longer. Last time he bought these they lasted a mere day before wilting, but thanks to the vinegar and sugar bath she recommended, these have lasted much longer!

Thanks to my friend Susan, I have finally gotten over my fear of cutting vinyl with the Silhouette. I know. Get with the times, Sara, am I right?

She brought over some things she cut for me (remember the face on the pumpkin for my mantel?) along with a bit of transfer tape and the end of a roll of vinyl so I could experiment. She also gave me a post it with the speed and pressure I should use to cut so I wouldn't forget.

I saw this idea a few different times while reading blogs the past couple of weeks and couldn't wait to try it. One of the best things about the Silhouette, if you ask me, is the fact that you don't need a stupid cartridge to cut something. You can either just go online to the store and buy a shape for a buck, or if you're cheap like me, go through Google images until you find something you like and convert that into the correct type of file for cutting. I can cut any font that's on my computer, and with all the free fonts out there, I easily have over a thousand. This machine is flipping awesome, and no, they didn't pay me to say that.

Those bats are a mere inch and a half across. I also had it cut out teensy eyes, about the size of the head of a pin. This way it kind of looks like their eyes are glowing when the light fixture is on. Pretty cool, huh?

While I was at it, I cut out a couple of rat silhouettes for the windows. They're up a little high, but since I live in an upstairs apartment I figured the view from the sidewalk would offset that, if that makes sense.

While I was on my vinyl kick I remembered that there were more faces on the sheet that Susan had cut for me. I stuck another jack o'lantern face on the light fixture at the top of the stairs. This stuff is pretty sturdy - we had a terrific storm the day before yesterday and even though this was fully exposed to the wind and rain it didn't even peel a little bit!

Now I am trying to figure out what to vinyl next!

I linked this post to The Stories of A 2 Z link party!