"I know you're making the house sooo creepy"

Hubs and I bought our Halloween costumes yesterday.  We took a risk and ordered off Amazon, so we're crossing our fingers that they get here in time to go out next weekend.  Last year we ended up going out as "The Really Good Looking Couple" (at least this is what we told people we were instead of owning up to the fact that we'd forgotten to buy costumes and had to go out in normal fancy dress wear).  Honestly we're not doing much different this year.  We're going as a masquerade couple so still fancy dress wear but there are masks this time and I think people will at least know what we are without asking this time. 

Anywho today's post really isn't about costumes so much, though I may come back to that in a later post (I'm going to attempt to make Alexis' and Bella's this year, bum bum buuuummm).  

Today's post is on a little project I completed last week for the grand total cost of..........

$1  

(insert cheering here)

I was inspired by this sophisticated-ly creepy little guy from Etsy dealer UnseenCurios, who goes for $6.99 plus shipping.  

Not a bad price by any stretch, but I just knew I could get the look for less.  (Besides did I mention we actually BOUGHT costumes this year?  I don't know about you but I only budget for but so much for each holiday and Halloween is definitely on the lower end of the group)

So first things first I gathered my supplies:

• Bat silhouettes from the dollar store..... $1
• lighter (already had).............................$0
• Book page (from an old text book)......$0
• 2 black frames (wedding gift)...............$0

Now to be completely honest when I bought the bats I thought they were decals that I could stick all over the wall and be done with.  However, when I got them home, I discovered that they were simply cut from heavy weight construction paper.  They also had lots of little detail cutouts, that were not all the way CUT OUT, and that had to be individually removed from each bat without tearing the rest of the bat to pieces.

See all the bends and creases in this guy?  Yeah those are the results of attempting not to tear him up while removing all of the little details.

No worries, the creases aren't visible when he's sandwiched in the frame under glass.

I decided to up the creep factor a bit by burning out parts of the book page ( I used an old Corrections text book, it was the "creepiest thing I had on hand, and it was the right size for the frames)

I did manage to burn myself once from hold the lighter on so long (the metal bits get quite hot), so it might be better to use the kind of lighter that stays lit without you messing with it, like a Zippo or something similarly designed.

After that I popped everything into the frames

and 

Voila...

Two framed bat silhouettes for 2/3 of the price of one on Etsy.

These guys will be taking up residence on either side of our Halloween themed mantle (I'll get around to showing you that soon enough).

For now thats it.  Enjoy the fancy creep factor.