Halloween is coming, and with it an explosion of orange and black. The holiday’s signature colors may be my least favorite color combination of all time. So, I put them in a box and it made all the difference.
To make your own set of Halloween curios, here’s what you’ll need:
Supplies:
- Paper mache or wooden curio box. I found mine at Michaels for less than $10. Here are some similar options – house and rectangle.
- Acrylic paint. I used Liquitex in grey, white, and gold.
- Foam brushes.
-
Halloween trinkets! Your local craft store will have a covey of these. You can also find a big collection here.
Step-by-Step:
Paint your curio boxes. If you want to forgo the traditional black and orange like I did, opt for a more neutral color palette like grey, gold, and white. Along the way, I learned that paper mache requires many layers of paint. Many!
Fill those boxes with your Halloween goodies. We housed a variety of objects in our Halloween curios. Everything from holiday-related items – like the PEZ dispenser, to orange cars that we had in the mix.
Display your curios! We adhered ours to the wall with Command strips, but they would be adorable standing alone on a mantel atop your Edgar Allen Poe collection.
A few notes…
- My favorite part about this project was that it was fun for my kids. They are still too young to seek out the gorey side of Halloween, but they love little trinkets and treasures. Collecting items to put in the curios was there favorite part of the project and they are forever moving things around and adding new treasures as they find them.
- If you can find curio boxes made from wood, they will probably be much easier to paint. Because, as I mentioned above, there were many layers of paint put on the paper mache boxes I had. Spray paint may have been a better option for the base coat.
Yay! How fun. I like how they’re seasonal, and still have orange and black, but balanced with the grays and texture, which makes them totally not Halloween cheesey. Great job!