Halloween “Spooky Tree” – Echo Park

Hi Everyone 

A few more Halloween ideas using the fabulous Apothecary Emporium Collection from Echo Park today.

I bought this Kaisercraft Modern Tree and set it aside for Christmas but I could not pass up the opportunity to make it into a “spooky tree” as my kids have called it!

I painted the whole piece with 2 coats of black acrylic paint and then laid the Black Magic (reverse) pattered paper over the tree in sections and glued it on. Using a very sharp knife I then cut around the branches and sanded the edges of the paper with a fine grit sandpaper. Would you believe I covered the whole tree in one piece of paper!

Now comes the fun part – decorating! This little banner was made using a pennant die – but you could easily just cut triangles of paper. The easiest way to do this is to make a little template from cardboard (two pieces of cereal box glued together is about the right weight) and then just cut around the template on your paper with a knife. This way is a lot quicker than tracing and cutting individual shapes, and works very well for simple shapes and straight lines.

I created some dimension by mounting the layers with 3-d foam and created the end “flags” using pieces from the Element Stickers. I love the way these little pumpkins look on top of one another!

I raided my plain chipboard stash for these little additional decorations but you could make them yourself very easily using a manual or electronic die-cutting machine OR often I search online for outline drawings, print them onto patterned paper and cut them out. I painted the raw edges of the chipboard black before covering them with scraps of paper and once again, cut around the edges with a super sharp knife. The Owls are from Scrapware and the crow was from an old pack of Scenic Route birds.

The owl eyes were made using 2 different sized hole punches. Adhere your scrap of paper to double-sided adhesive paper and punch your smaller hole. Then – simply punch a larger hole around that and you have an eye. If you get them a bit off centre by accident – it just means you can give your creatures a more fun expression!

I have one more Halloween post to share tomorrow. Please post a comment with any questions

Lowri 🙂

I am linking up this project to these websites here.