Round 2 On My Mammoth Mantle

Ok, here it is...

My Halloween mantle in our family room.

My family has been asking and asking for me to post photos of our new house!  This counts right?

This whole mantle decorating was giving me serious headaches!

As I mentioned in my '

Halloween on My Buffet

' post, trying to figure out where to put things in this new home is a task, and I have a lot more house than I used to!

I tried and fussed with it to get set for autumn.  Here is what it looked like.

I put this all together, thinking it would stay up through all of fall.

I thought, initially I'd mostly do Halloween in our kitchen and keep the living room and family room more 'autumn' with bits of Halloween.

I changed my mind!  

I took everything down except our family picture.  I tried and tried to decorate around it.

Once I took that down, and fully committed to a big Halloween mantle things started to roll. 

I started with my main focus above the mantle.  

As you can see this fireplace is mammoth!!!  It is scaled so large that whatever I put above it had to be big.  I don't really have anything that big, so I combined items to create something big.

I started with an empty frame, hung that up.  

I created this black and white stripe 'picture' as a backdrop for the biggest spider I own.

This was super simple to do. 

I painted a large piece of cardboard all white.

I considered painting large black stripes, and as I went for my tape, saw this old gaffer tape.

I haven't used it for a long time, but immediately decided these would be my stripes.

I measured 3 inches down in a few spots and taped across, then measure from the bottom of the tape for my next stripe.  It isn't centered top to bottom, but there is so much going on, it doesn't matter!

This cardboard is light weight, bonus.  I used command strips to hang it in place.

My next step was layering webbing, then hanging my spider.  His legs are just tucked around the frame to hold him in place. 

That silver web is a place mat I just bought at Marshall's.  Can't decide if I like it plain or with that web.

Moving down to the mantle surface, I started with purple mesh I had on hand.

I layered a strand of black leaves then started putting pumpkins up.

I needed some color variety so I added these green sprigs.  I had bought a bunch of them at the end of the season a few years ago.  

They are great for making hair pieces for dance costumes.

I also added some crows.  Can you see them?

Here is a shot of above the mantle.

These trees fit perfectly here!

I got these last year on Christmas clearance from Target.  They are now my Halloween trees!

 I wrapped some dot ribbon around them and may decorate them further with skulls and black flowers and such, we'll see.

Here is one last look at everything all together.

I'm pretty proud of my creation!  The hubbs was also impressed and called it a work of art!  That's when you know it's good!

There is much more Halloween to share!  Stay tuned!