Laura Vegas

As part of the Halloween Extravaganza going on at Kerri Bradford Studio this week, I have a new altered Halloween project to share.

I have a confession. I don't go all out every Halloween and decorate my house top to bottom. I'm closer to the not-decorating-at-all side of the spectrum. Lol. I see photos everywhere I look of spooky, but really cute, Halloween decorations filling up every nook and cranny of homes, and I wish I could learn to incorporate it into my house in the same way. But I can't. So I limit my Halloween decor to the one small table by my front door. Which means I keep my decor items nice and simple, just like these paper mache "BOO" letters.

I picked up these 8" paper mache letters at the craft store a few weeks ago. I always enjoy working with paper mache letters and boxes for altered projects. They're so easy to paint and cover with papers.  

I knew I wanted to use the diamond background shape from the Foundations: Trick or Treat kit on the front of each letter, so I cut 3 seperate pieces from some Bella Blvd Halloween patterned paper. The other side of this paper is orange, which was what I was originally going to use. But I just wasn't feeling it. I didn't want to re-cut any pieces, so I just flipped it over and used the backside. 

I also re-sized the tree from the This & That: Halloween [Just Shapes] kit to the same height as my letters (8 inches), and cut it from black cardstock, along with some bats from the new This & That: All Hallows Eve kit.

I thought about painting the letters, but I just couldn't settle on a good color. Some sort of cream seemed to be the right choice, but I'm not a cream kind of girl. I thought some text tissue paper might be fun to decoupage on, and I thought for sure I had some. But I didn't. What I did find was some cream washi tape with black dots from 7 Gypsies. So I simply covered the front of each letter with torn strips of tape. 

I wasn't too neat about it, and I didn't even worry about how much tape was folded over the edges of the letters. I then painted on some black acrylic paint around the edges of the letters. Once again, I wasn't neat about it at all, and just made sure the paint went up to the edge of the tape.  

I spritzed on some white misting spray over the taped/painted letters. That part didn't work quite as planned, since the ink never did dry. I'm guessing it was because of the texture of the tape. I didn't stress about it smearing, and just covered the entire letters with Mod Podge.

After that dried, I then adhered the diamond paper pieces to the letters, using glue dots. I used my scissors to cut off the excess from around the edges of the letters and the insides of each letter. I added just a few layered bats to the letters, and called it "done".

And don't forget to check out Kerri's Halloween Extravaganza sale going on this week. It's a great time to stock up on Halloween and Fall kits!