Please Welcome: Christina from Lincoln Street

Hello Eighteen25 readers!!! This is Christina from Lincoln Street Blog and I am beyond thrilled to be here sharing three Spooktacular ideas to kick-start your Halloween crafting season! First up are these economically friendly (does that sound better than cheap?? :) tea light candle holders.

Wouldn't it be fab if I had a tutorial for how to make the owl you see behind the candle holders...I know, I know...but I don't. So, tea light candle holders it is! Your shopping list should include:

-decoupage
-tissue paper
-frilly frills
-ribbon
-glass cylinders (I found mine at dollar tree for...you guessed it, one dollar)
-ah yes, and a paintbrush, I prefer the foam ones for "paging," short for decoupaging...I just now made that up.

This is what the glass looked like when I plucked it off the shelf at Dollar Tree. I separated one piece of tissue paper, lined up the edge of the paper with the bottom edge of the glass and actually applied the 'page directly to the glass. I then smoothed out the tissue paper as best I could and pressed it against the glued glass as I went. Once it was completely wrapped I just trimmed the tissue paper on top by following along the rim of the glass with my scissors. I allowed it to dry for about thirty minutes before applying a thin coat of decoupage all over the outside of the glass (which should have tissue paper on it. About a half hour later I spruced up the top by hot gluing tissue garland to the rim and then adding a thin trim of ribbon on top of that. Again, applying with hot glue. With three dollars less in your pocket and about an hour of your time gone, this is what you should have:

Okay, up next is a variation on the above project but even ~~cheaper~~ more economically friendly :)

Did I mention that they take even less energy to make? Well, that is if you don't count the time it takes to scrub the labels off the bottles! So, about two weeks before I knew there would be an opportunity to guest post here I started saving my empty glass containers from left-over sauces and such. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with them until THIS! Inspiration struck and I dug out my old can of Frosted spray paint. Side note: I have had that spray paint for literally ten years...it has just sat on the shelf in the garage and the stuff still totally works-->I was floored! So, go out and get yourself some Frosted spray paint from Michael's, it'll last for years to come :) So, I spray painted each jar with Frost and let them dry for an hour. You don't need a ton of the paint, it won't look like it is even coating it but as it drys the frosted look will deepen, you really don't need much. Once they were dry I cut up a piece of paper I purchased at Beverly's (If you don't have one locally you can just get Halloween paper that is made to look like either punch out labels or labels you can cut out, you could also hunt around online for free vintage images and print them off your computer) and I decoupaged my paper to the front of my jars by applying a thin coat of decoupage to the back of the paper and just holding it down in place for a few seconds.. That's it. I didn't even add decoupage to the top. It's a personal preference. I really liked the look of the frosted glass with the paper on it, as is. I didn't want there to be any sort of gloss or glazed look to it. I added a strand of ribbon to the top with hot glue and placed candles inside. In case you are wondering: the two front jars are jalapeno and spaghetti sauce jars and the one in back that has a tapered candle coming from it was a Teriyaki sauce jar.

Alright, enough with the glassware-->how about a wreath?!?!

These are the usual...or maybe not-so-usual suspects:

-Dollar Tree foam wreath form
-1/3 yard Chevron printed fabric
-Halloween Paper
-White Doily
-Black Spray Paint
-Boo stamp
-Straight pins

I started out by cutting strips of fabric, about 4 inches wide. There is literally no wrong way to do this, the strips don't have to be cut perfectly at all. That is what I love most about this particular project :) SO once you have your strips the pinning will begin. I hope these pictures tell the story well enough:

I basically just pinched and pinned all the way around with strips of fabric. I filled in gaps by maneuvering fabric around and just really had fun with it! I made a giant paper accordion circle ( I am NOT the creator of the accordion circle, I saw a tutorial on it years ago and would be lying if I said I knew where I learned from ) I cut one and a half inch strips from 12x12 paper and accordion folded it all the way up. I then hot glued the ends together to form this giant orange accordion flower in the middle of my wreath. I spray painted the white doily black and hot glued that next. On top of that went a piece of scrapbook paper I cut into a rectangle shape (rounding the edges) and lastly I ended with a stamped "Boo" in the middle. I used two pins to secure a piece of ribbon to the back of the wreath for hanging. If you have made it this far...you are a trooper! Thanks for hanging with yours truly:

and I hope to see more of you over at Lincoln Street for my first year of Halloween blogging and tutorials. These are a few of the projects I will be featuring in the upcoming month...