Haunted (Bird) Houses

It is my favorite time of year- fall. And most importantly Halloween!!  I am obsessed with the holiday.  I literally spend all year brainstorming costumes and party plans- quickly jotting notes down in my "Halloween Notebook".  With the previous weekend being the last weekend in September, a trip to Micheal's for Halloween craft suppliers was in order.  I needed goodies for decorating the house as well as supplies for the party I will be throwing in celebration of the glorious day (more to come on decor for that later).

Now, I'm sure you have seen those little Christmas villages that people set up in their homes that light up or have music.  Adorable.  There are Halloween versions too!  I stumbled upon an entire aisle of the awesomeness in Micheal's.  It made me giddy.

Lemax Spooky Town Collection

Phantom Station!  Oh I love it.  The price tag however, I do not love.  That particular haunt comes in at the highly respectable price of $59.99 over at americansale.com and that is because it is a discontinued building.  It originally was sold for $119.  That would not be in my budget.  So I left the aisle discouraged with the haunted noises of ghouls mocking my distressed retreat.  Sulking, I wandered the store and that is when inspiration struck.

Micheal's sells bird houses made of balsa wood for the low price of $4.99.  The cogs began whirling and the end result is this thrifty little DIY.  I decided that three houses was the right number for my little village.  After quickly scooping them up and grabbing some acrylic paint, I ran home to begin.

To start, I cut down any of the dowels that protruded for the birds to perch on.  I then sanded down the ends to create a smooth surface for painting.

Bird house with amazing crafts plastic tablecloth

Once that was completed for all three, I broke out the acrylic primer paint.  Now this is not an entirerly necessary step, but I wanted my black to be the blackest it could be without any wood grain showing.  The primer did a great job at sealing the wood so it wouldn't suck up all the paint.  I also used a foam brush for the majority of the project to eliminate brush strokes, using a paint brush only for the tiny crevices.

I let the primer paint dry completely and then did one layer of plain black acrylic paint.  After letting that dry completely, I went back and spot checked the houses so that every tiny bit was inky black.  This was made incredibly easy to do since missed spots had the white primer to immediately call them out.

The houses looked great, yet I felt that to really make them look spooktacular (oh I am so sorry for that one) they needed an added oomph.  Cue my girl Martha.  Martha Stewart has an amazing craft line.  Seriously.  Buy every single one of her craft products.  Do it now.  She has a great metallic acrylic paint line that comes in every color imaginable.  I decided to use the Gun Metal color which is a dark, smokey grey.  Using that to paint another layer on the roofs and accent features of the houses gave them that added depth I wanted.

Letting them dry!  (Oh and I got coffins for 99 cents too- more on those later)

After everything dried, I set up my tableau and boom!  $15 for the houses + $5 for the paint = one third the cost of 1 pre-made house.  I am still debating drilling a hole into the back of each so that I can feed string lights into the insides.  I think this would give it the final step for completion.

I'm so excited to put up the rest of the Halloween decorations and really creep the place out.  Visions of skeletons dangling from chandeliers and spiderwebs everywhere.  My pinterest Halloween Party board is getting out of control...