halloween decorating for *almost* free

Now…I racked my brain for a totally and completely free craft but…I only came up with almost free. It should cost you a dollar or under for each project so…good enough. 🙂

We are apartment dwellers in our student condition so this challenge is quite perfect for us.

This our entryway table…thing…all decked out for Halloween.

1. This is my version of Becky Higgin’s 3D pumpkin art. This was free for me because I used an old frame I had, an old mat I had, and some pumpkins I got at Michaels three years ago for like 50 cents. Now I know that is lame…free for me but likely not for everyone else?…Don’t worry this isn’t the free craft I am sharing today. But check out Becky Higgin’s craft if you would like.

2. This is the almost free craft for today. “How to” is at the end of the post.

3. Painted branches are always a fun free craft if you have the paint on hand. They were actually the inspiration this year for my spooky tree door hanging.

4. I put my branches one of my favorite vases…my striped elevated vase.

5. And just because some of you new to my blog might be wondering about these distressed canvases. 

Now for the {almost} free craft how to:

You need:

a piece of wood cut into a square
paint – mine was orange {as you can see I already painted the wood orange}
glue {and hot glue and mod podge – optional}
green peas

not pictured:
black paper
an exacto knife and cutting mat

– I took an old wooden square I used for another project I no longer liked. If you don’t have one of those, go to Home Depot, look through their scrap wood bin and get a square cut for you. Some locations do it free and others will charge you 25 cents per cut. Either way you should be able to leave with your square of wood {plus some} for less than $1.

– Paint it orange or whatever color you like. Then glue green peas all over it. The peas are I think 76 cents per bag at Walmart and you will probably use 1/3 – 1/2 of the bag for an 8×8 inch square like mine. I used Aleene’s glue for most of the gluing but then got impatient and finished up with a glue gun. The peas fall of like crazy so I added a coat of mod podge. This helped a little  bit. It also clumped unattractively in one spot on mine. 🙂 Oh well.

For all it’s fussy glory I really like the textured look it provides. The orange underneath provides a nice pop of color and a little depth.

– Lastly, I found an image of a crow through google images, printed it up, and then cut it out in black paper before adding it to my plaque.

Simple. Easy. Done!

Because I had these things on hand it was free!

Can’t get better than that!

I have two more almost free Halloween ideas coming tomorrow. It involves A LOT of sticks. So if you are collecting branches to put in a vase and for this project, get more sticks too.

If you want to participate in Lorajean’s Free Halloween Challenge go here. She has great free printables on her site and she announced that she is going to do a round up of all of your free projects if you participate!

Happy Halloween…decorating!

P.S..I also linked here: