the newly cornwells: The Magic of Spray Paint: Halloween Part 1

So we are just a few days away from Halloween and this year I'm seriously hoping for more than 10 trick or treaters! In years past we just haven't had too many, and I'm not sure if I should attribute this issue to lack of kiddos in our old neighborhood (entirely possible with lots of our neighbors being "original owners" to the circa 1920 bungalow homes) or some new trend in trick or treating. I don't know maybe people drive to better places to trick or treat now? Who knows!

At any rate, I'm not lowering my expectations, in fact, I'm doubling down on some legit visitors. To this point, I have actually decided to invest in this holiday i.e. decorate. Admittedly, I've resisted investment in the past due not only to lack of visitors but also lack of acceptable decorations. I don't do icky or scary well and things get pretty "country cottage" pretty quick when it comes to this season. I don't need corn husks and 50 shades of tan, burgundy and orange to convey fall - I'm a bit more simple than that.

After not finding anything that was really going to fit the scale or style I was looking for, I decided to make my own door decks - enter project #2 for our spray paint series and the first half of my halloween holiday decor.

I actually saw some super cute, but weirdly expensive Styrofoam glittery BOO letters at our local grocery store but at $30 a set so $60 for both of my front doors, I passed. And lets be honest D would have had a fit if I came home from the GROCERY store with $60 of Halloween decks... Plus the B and one of the O's was black glitter with the other O in orange glitter and black just doesn't show up well on our taupe doors. BUT there was an idea there.

I picked up a two sets of BOO letters at Michaels for about $2.50 each, along with a can of orange Kyrlon spray paint and some black and cream striped wired ribbon. So for about $20 I had the beginnings of something.

Much like the wood holder, I started out by covering the grass with a drop cloth, shaking my paint and starting with long wide passes that went beyond the edges of my letters.

here's where things began to get harry...

Remember when I said some surfaces should be primed because spray paint doesn't stick well on them? Apparently this was one of those surfaces. While the letters themselves were wood, they were already painted white, with almost an enamel finish (most likely so you could hang as is). I realized this would be an issue almost immediately when the paint was doing more of a pool than a stick and dry. Ick. Instead of freaking out and trying to fix it in some way (spraying more, wiping off excess, etc.) I just stayed SUPER patient with it - which is so not typiical for me.

DO NOT pile on more paint hoping that things will look better - it never works that way, just stay patient and let it hopefully sink in and dry out. Thankfully this eventually (i.e. about an hour in between coats instead of the usual 10 minutes) worked and I had these guys all oranged up.

all painted up and no where to go.

By this point after 3 coats/hours of drying, and a couple days on hiatus in the garage, I realized these puppies would be too big to just hot glue onto my ribbon. Enter the yard sale posts! I picked up a few of those 30 inch long posts from Michaels for about a $1 each - I wanted some wider, longer wood posts but could only find balsa wood which is just too thin and fragile for this particular project.

I then grabbed my other supplies and went to town putting these together. Basically I took this craft glue and covered the posts completely by spreading the entire surface with glue with a foam paint brush. I then delicately placed the ribbon on top of the glue and made sure it was even and secure.

best all purpose glue ever + cute cheap "halloween" ribbon that I plan on using year round.

After about 5 minutes of setting time, this was good and secure and I was ready to place the letters orange side down on the work bench and the new ribbon covered post on top of the letters. With 6 small nails per BOO board, I hammered letters into place by affixing both the top and bottom backs of each letter to the board via nails.

To finish this project off I created a little loop with tails on top for hanging and snipped a tail for the bottom ribbon to give it a little more sass.