Halloween Gallery Wall

I do hope you will all indulge me here.  I love Halloween and our annual Halloween party. Such frivolous fun.

We always have the party at my dad's house and Kate, her daughters Maddi and Lizz and I are the ones on hand to decorate.  My son Evan is usually here when we need him to climb up on a ladder and do something treacherous.   

This year I wanted to do a gallery wall of spooky images.  

Cue craft time music!

So this craft involved dollar store frames, vinegar, water and Krylon Looking Glass spray paint.  I bought mine at Michael's with a 40% off coupon but I'm sure you can find it at your local craft or hardware store.

I went to my local dollar store hoping to find 8×10 black frames but what I did find were garish gold certificate frames in a 8 1/2 x 11 size that i though I could work with so I snapped up nine of them.

I also found nine different images I wanted to use in my frames.  I wanted a Gothic, spooky look so I googled 30's silent screen stars (their over the top makeup up ends up looking kind of spooky…) and found the images I wanted to include in my gallery wall.  I just printed them off on regular old printer paper.  I did try to make then the same tone – not quite black and white.

I sprayed the frames flat black using up various cans of matte black spray paint we had on hand.

The cool, mirrored effect comes from using Kryon Looking Glass paint.  

The trick is to mix to a 50/50 water and vinegar solution and spray it on the glass before spraying the paint.

Pretend you can see the vinegar/water droplets on the invisible sheets of glass.  Also ignore the outlines of the frames from when I sprayed them black.

After spraying with the vinegar/water solution go over the glass with the looking glass spray paint in thin coats.  I blotted each layer with a wad of crumpled paper towels to lift some of the paint, concentrating on the center so there would be less of mirrored effect there.

I would say I did about three coats, alternating the vinegar/water spray and the paint.  I let it dry for about an hour and then assessed.  I didn't think the image was coming though as much as I liked so I sprayed a little more vinegar/water mix and then blotted firmly with paper towels until I got the effect I was going for.

I'll tell you – paint is so forgiving so just experiment until you get the effect you want. 

I wanted mirrored frames with the ghostly presence of others showing though.  I think I managed it with this technique!