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Hope that you enjoyed Halloween as much as us!
Just stopping in to share my Halloween decor before I swap some pieces out for November's harvest vibe. My favorite feature in my vintage apartment is this mantel! So I love to play it up, especially for the holidays. I naturally had some edgier vintage and an eclectic mix of gloomy decor accents and vases. So I just picked up some essentials from the Dollar Tree in plans to mix and match my current eclectic decor.
The first phase was finding creepy black gauze to drape on the mantel, a fun statement hanging for the wall above the mantel, and something fun to put on my front door, black flowers, and decorative pumpkins. To my surprise I was in luck! The Dollar tree literally had all of this and more. I filled up my cart and raced home.
Front Door
Starting with the front door I found these quirky spider webs which I thought would be great anchors for the door and for the mantel scene. I jazzed this one up with these black and deep purple artificial flowers and hung a skeleton for some official spookiness.
Decor
I found the cutest sparkly skulls, glittery branches, pumpkins, eclectic votives, these cute skeleton flutes, and even eyeball flowers! We're living our best maximalist life, so I was definitely being extra and sprinkled these things everywhere to embellish the holiday with that spooky quirky vibe. I even swapped out my candles and mixed and matched the pumpkins for my larger candle holders.
The Mantel
I was soo thrilled to find this gauze, I'm pretty sure I grabbed the last pack. For just $1, it makes a big statement! Simply stretching it out and continuing to drape the material until it was giving an edgy vibe was easy. I used double sided tape to secure it onto the mantel, and command hooks to secure it on each end of our mantel.
Styling this mantel was all about building up the scene and infusing elements that would sustain continuity. Gathering up the rest of the decor, I really wanted to continue with gold as my accent, so I used this mask that my late aunt gifted me. This changed the entire energy and upgraded the dollar store faux spider web to a New Orleans vintage Marie Laveau vibe. I continued to build up each side to create continuity by adding pumpkins, a votive, various distressed candle sticks, and a beautiful shiny gloomy vintage vase.
I'm not sure if I had a theme in mind, but a vintage maximalist play on black and white for this mantel was my main desire. I definitely envisioned incorporating my Haitian statue for a central afrocentric theme. For symmetry I recommend starting from the center of the mantel. Then you can continue to build up each side compositionally. For A-symmetry, the side you choose should compliment the elements of your home (wall, window, adjacent plants, or furniture) then start to build the scene outward from your statement piece. Also, you can always use the rule of three. one high element, one medium, one low. This can look like a vase, a tall candle stick, and a shorter accent, such as in the images below.
After completing decorations, my husband and I ended our night with creepy green cocktails and catching up on the latest episodes of Atlanta.
Cheers! - Xo, pB
