Artline Monday - More Halloween fun

So we are still getting ready for Halloween in our house, we really like to go all out with lots of decorations, spooky themed snacks and family friendly scary movies, half term is practically a week long celebration of everything creepy and fun!  I always decorate our front door too so people know it's okay to come and trick or treat on the 31st October, so for today's post I am going to show you how I do it using my Artline glass and chalk markers.

The first thing I wanted to do was make a chalkboard sign to hang outside, I brought a cheep one from Home Bargains and got a bag of googly eyes too. 

Supplies for a spooky chalkboard sign

I painted the wooden frame with a red poster marker, it only took me a few minutes using the 12mm sponge tip and it dried really quickly. 

Painted frame

Then I glued some of the googly eyes to the frame.

Googly eyes

I used my white chalk marker to write "Tricks" and "Treats" on the board....

Writing the sign

... and then used my purple chalk marker to write "no" and "just"...

Finishing the quote

... the last steps were to add some cobwebs to the corners of the chalkboard...

Drawing some cobwebs

.... and then a loop of twine so I can hang the sign up!

My finished sign

Outside I got to work on my door using the glass and chalk markers and a few window stickers and chalkboard labels.

Both the glass and chalk markers work well on glass so they are great for drawing on your windows.  They wipe away easily with a damp cloth too.

Adding some grass with a glass marker

Drawing a pair of eyes on my letterbox

Colouring in the whites of the eyes

Boo!

I didn't want to use the markers on my UPVC door so I stuck a few chalkboard label stickers onto it instead and then wrote and drew on those with the chalk maker.  I can peel them off after Halloween and throw them away without worrying they might damage my door.

Close up of my window decorations

I have a couple of stickers on the glass of my door that say no leaflets and no door to door sales so I covered these with some black tissue paper and used an oval chalkboard sticker to make a cute little spider, adding eyes, legs and a web with my chalk markers.  I also drew a ghost and wrote "Hide" and "Run away" on the glass before adding a few more decorative stickers to finish the look.  

All set for Halloween

I am quite pleased with how the front looks now, but if I change my mind it will be easy to wipe it all away and start again!

What do you think? 

Artline Monday - Great British Bake Off fun and photo props

The Great British Bake Off started again last week and I am so excited to get to know all the new contestants.  My girls and I gather together on the sofa every Tuesday to watch the show and it has become a really big thing in our house (just for us girls though, the boys aren't interested)!

When we first started watching it the food always made us hungry so I started making sure we all had a drink and snack ready before each episode began but over the years this had evolved to something a little, well, you might say.... crazy!    

Menu for our Bake Off evening

You know those cafes with the fancy chalkboards that someone lovingly writes the menu or specials on?  Well I brought a little A4 size one for our GBBO evenings!  I use an Artline chalk marker to create the menu and then I stand the board up on the coffee table for when my girls get home from school so they can see what I have brought or made for us to eat while we watch the show!  It just adds an extra element of fun to the day and makes us look forward to Tuesdays a little more!  

I don't just use the board and markers for Bake Off though, they are great for photo props too!  Milestones, birthdays and events can all be written on the board and then held or added somewhere to the photo you are about to take.  I have been designing one for when the children go back to school in a couple of days and because the markers wipe off easily with a damp cloth if I don't like how something looks I can just wipe it away and start again! 

Vibrant chalk markers

The chalk markers are so much more vibrant than regular chalk so they really stand out against the black background and look great in photographs.

Back to school photo prop

I think I am going to do something like this for Wednesday's back to school photos, it just depends on whether I take a pic of my kids all together in their new uniforms or individual shots.  If I do get individual ones I can wipe out the year number and change it for each photo (or set of photos, I like to take a lot of pics!).

So do you like the sound of my GBBO evenings?