Williams-Sonoma Knock-Off Halloween Wreath

 

It's the 1st of October and that means it's time to start decking the halls with all things wicked and spooky! A few weeks ago I was browsing through the Williams-Sonoma website and saw a gorgeous grapevine wreath with a crow on it. I fell in love with it, but when I saw the price, I was stunned - $70! Since it's such a simple wreath made with readily available materials, I decided to take a trip to the dollar store and make one of my own.

Here's a quick tutorial to show how it came together:

The WS wreath is round, but when I spotted this oval shape at Michaels, I fell in love with it! To create the base, I lightly misted it with grey and black spray paint.

 

When the paint was dry, I adhered Spanish moss from the dollar store.

 

Finally, I hot glued a dollar store crow to the moss. That's it! Almost silly to even write a tutorial for this!

The Williams-Sonoma version has a fancier crow, but for a savings of over $60, I think this one is just fine!

You can find products similar to what I used on Amazon via the links below. Thanks so much for stopping by today!

DIY: How To Make Your Own Decorative Halloween Candles

It’s almost time to break out the Halloween goodies! If you like DIYing your way throughout the holidays, this is the craft for you.

I’m pretty into candles. They make great decorations, they add pretty light to a room, and sometimes they smell pretty good. Have you seen some of the prices on decorative candles though? Oof. Just get crafty and make your own.

You need the following things:

Candles
Wax Paper
Tissue Paper
Rubber Stamps or InkJet Printer
Colored Pencils and Pens
Heat/Embossing Tool or (very hot) Blowdryer

First, you start with tissue paper. Place your image on the shiny, smooth side of the paper. You can use a rubber stamp, draw your own image, or use a printer to create your images. Then cut them out as close to the edge as possible.

If you’re not a rubber stamp collector or a particularly great drawer and prefer to print your images like I did, just tape a piece of tissue paper to a piece of standard printer paper and feed it through. You can find images and clipart to download all over the internet. Resize them in a photo editing program to fit your candle size.

Color them in with pencils and add additional details with a ballpoint pen if you want.

 

 

Once you’re done with that it’s time to adhere the images to the candle. Use a little bit of glue stick to stick your tissue paper to the candle.

Then wrap a piece of wax paper around the candle and over your tissue paper cut-out. Use your heat tool to melt the wax paper. You’ll know when it’s melted because the image will get clearer and you won’t be able to see the edges of the tissue paper cut-out anymore. I used a heat gun but a very hot blowdryer will work as well. Using your blowdryer’s concentrator nozzle attachment is a good idea. Don’t over do it! You don’t want to warp the candle.

Once you peel off the wax paper you’ll see that the tissue paper cut-outs are embedded and sealed in a new later of wax. Make sure you use a fresh piece of wax paper for each candle to get a clean, smooth finish.

Done! Simple custom DIY printed decorative Halloween candles.