Halloween Tree - Part 1

On a recent trip to Michael’s, I was drooling over all of the Halloween decorations.  I LOVE HALLOWEEN!!! My birthday is the day before Halloween and it has always been a favorite holiday of mine.  Michael’s has some of the cutest decorations!  I fell in love with a tree they had for hanging ornaments on.

Having just moved into our new home and with all of the expenses of moving, back to school and college tuition my budget is T-I-G-H-T.  I’m sad to say that I had to walk out of Michael’s and leave all the great decorations behind.  That’s when my creative side kicked in and the wheels started turning.  Maybe I couldn’t buy one of their Halloween trees but I knew that I was fully capable of making my own.

I got home from Michael’s and went out into the backyard to look for a branch I could cut off of a tree.  I was lucky enough to find this branch on the ground.  Score!  I didn’t even have to cut it!

It turned out to be the perfect branch to make my Halloween tree with.  I took the branch and spray painted it black.  It took several coats of black spray paint to fully cover the branch on all sides.  My husband was not amused by the fact that I spray painted it in the grass and left a huge black outline on his grass.  Hey, my train of thought was – at least I’m not spray painting it on the deck like I normally would.  lol

The next thing I needed was a witches cauldron.  It was so early in the season that I had to go to Halloween Express to find one.   I was not real happy with having to pay $8.00 for it when I know the dollar store will have them later this month.  I mean, don’t they know I’m on a budget?  And, it’s not like it was a huge cauldron and it is just made of plastic after all.  But they had me over a barrel because my impulsiveness wouldn’t wait for anyone else to get them in at a cheaper price.  No, I had to have it TODAY!

When I got home, I took an old plastic cup cup that was about 4 inches tall and 2.5 inches in diameter.  I glued it to the bottom of the cauldron using E6000.

Once that dried, I mixed up some Plaster of Paris that I had left over.  I used 1 part water to 2 parts Plaster of Paris.  I poured about a fourth of the Plaster of Paris mixture into the cup and then inserted the stick into the Plaster of Paris.  I continued to fill the cup in small increments.  By pouring it in in small increments I could tap the cup/cauldron on the counter to get the air out of the Plaster of Paris.  If you try this, make sure that you have something ready to prop the stick up with until the Plaster of Paris dries.  I ended up using a roll of paper towels because it was the closest thing within reach.

Once the Plaster of Paris had dried, I put two half bricks into the cauldron so that the tree wouldn’t be too top heavy and topple over.  OK – that’s not true.  I had to learn the hard way that I needed to add the bricks to the cauldron to weigh it down so that it wouldn’t be top heavy.  I didn’t do it at first and I had a little accident with one of my ornaments.  More specifically, I broke the feet off of a new glass ornament I had purchased.  Wahhhh……I was able to glue a portion of the feet back on, but in the back, it is missing it’s heels.  Such a hard lesson to learn.

After placing the bricks into the cauldron I stuffed the cauldron with newspaper for filler.  Then, I took some spider web looking fabric that I purchased at the dollar store and draped it around the inside and the edge of the cauldron. You can’t see it on the cauldron in the picture but it is there.  This is what the fabric looks like.  Kind of like black cheese cloth.

And here is what the tree looks like.  I think it turned out cuter than the ones I saw at Michael’s.

Stay tuned for my next post where I decorate the tree!