Happy Halloween!  This year Brian and I decided to host a party for our friends, and I knew I would use the Silhouette Cameo to do a lot of fun DIY decorations!  We had so much fun with it and really went crazy with our ideas.  If you need some last minute inspiration, most of these projects are super quick and easy and can definitely be done the day before Halloween. 😉  At the end of the post, I summed up my thoughts on the Cameo in a review if you are interested in what I have to say there.

The biggest thing was the huge spider on our living room ceiling.  It’s probably around 3′ long.  Brian made it using paper mache with a styrofoam head we found at a thrift store as the body.  I must say, it ended up being insanely creepy!  Of course, we made it a multi-layered web nest and then filled that with over 100 baby spiders.  I found a picture of a black widow, traced it, and put the Cameo to work!  We cut these out with black card stock.  People could not believe that they were just paper!

So those pictures above are during the day…at night, we turned on a blacklight and I have to say the effect was greatly intensified!

Creepy, right?!  It’s enough that I don’t want to sit in my living room right now when I’m writing this at night…even with regular lights on!

Next up is our “Boos” setup.  We had most drinks in the kitchen but wanted to have a spot to keep some cold in the living room too.  So we got some big pumpkins, hallowed them out, and then I cut out the text, Frankenstein, and Bride of Frankenstein (to go with our costumes) with Oracle 651 vinyl.  I used the extended 12″x24″ Silhouette mat when cutting these, which was great to use.  This was a little tricky to apply but worked out well in the end!  We filled the pumpkins with ice, glow sticks, and drinks.  The white vinyl glowed great under the blacklight.

I made good use of my card stock and also used my Cameo cut out around 60 bats, and then taped them on the wall in a flying formation.  I also found pictures of three bats online and then traced them to create cut lines.  It added a nice touch to an otherwise blank corner.

---

The other thing we did which was unrelated to the Cameo was our hallway of floating candles.  Brian made these with painted paper towel and toilet paper tubes, hot glue to create “wax drips” and LED candles.  I love this one!  We totally kept the candles because I definitely want to put it up again.  Or, if we ever have a Harry Potter themed party. 😉

Brian loves hanging things on the ceiling so much, he decided to hang 70 glowsticks in the kitchen.  I’d say that was also a success!

Lastly, I couldn’t help but make some random additional Halloween details (for the sign, I found an old piece of barn wood we had laying around from our also very DIY wedding – a little tough to get it to stick but I made it work).  I used Oracle 651 vinyl for all of these except the food signs (card stock); the process is pretty straight forward.  Now I understand why everyone wants to just put vinyl on everything!  The Cameo really made it so easy and fun.

We loved decorating for this party and would do it again anytime.  It was a fun night!

 

Thanks for sticking around for this lengthly post – I’m so excited to share these ideas and thoughts with you.  I hope you were inspired and maybe will join in with me on the Cameo obsession!

Elisabeth