Decorating for the different holidays can really set the tone for your home. Whether you will be having parties or just enjoying it yourself, having touches of special days always makes you smile. What isn’t smile-inducing though is the price it can cost to decorate for these special days! But here on Channelling Dolly you know I love a good DIY so today I will show you how to create your own Halloween art to get your mantle ready for the trick or treaters! 

To start select a canvas size to fit your space. For this project, I used a 24″ x 24″ one. Any size would work just make sure it is a square shape. 

*Tip: These canvases can range close to $30. I found this one at Michael’s for 70% off so it cut down the price of the project significantly. They run these sales often so make sure to check that out before paying full price. 

Next, draw a large circle. I used a bowl to get the exact size here. 

Now add in your cat and pumpkins. I drew these freehand, but it is just as easy to print out a stencil online and draw from there. No shame in the stencilling game! 

On the scrapbooking aisle, I found this velvet paper for a little over $1 that worked perfectly for bats! 

I drew the outline in pencil on the backside of the paper and cut out the three bats needed for this project. If you prefer more bats there is plenty of paper left from one sheet to cut out more. 

Black acrylic paint was used to fill in the cat. At first I was going to stripe its’ tail in black and white which is why the pencil drawing has lines. I later decided to do all black. 

While the first coat of the black cat was drying a white coat was painted on the entire canvas except for the moon, cat and pumpkins. 

Fill in the moon and the pumpkins. The moon, as well as the cat, required a few coats to create the thick paint look.  The pumpkins were done using a dark orange and a lighter one to make it look more textured. 

The DecoArt Americana Decor Metallics was used for the moon and the finish is spectacular. This was my first time using this product, but I could not be happier with the result. It was close to $10 for this jar, but using the 40% off coupon offered on the Michael’s app brought it down to $6. Definitely worth the price! 

When the moon dries add in the cat’s whiskers. This was done with a thin Sharpie paint marker. After that section off the white portions of the canvas with painters tape to create the stripes. To make this easy I lined up strips of painters tape diagonally side by side and then pulled off every other one. The sections without tape were then painted black. 

Once the black paint has dried peel off the painters’ tape to reveal your stripes. At this point, a little touch up may need to be done if any of the paint has bled under the tape. 

Using ModPodge applied onto the back of the bats place them around the moon like shown below: 

Now you have a Halloween painting for your home much cheaper than you could have purchased one! How fun is that!?!

Happy Halloween!