A BAT-tastic Display for a Halloween Mantle

by Donna

4 Materials

2 Hours

Easy

I wasn't really happy with how my fall decorations looked, so I grabbed a few handy materials to make this quick bat-themed Halloween project. I think it adds just the right bit of fun to my fall mantle!

a bat tastic display for a halloween mantle

So this is how my fall mantle was looking when I first started decorating for autumn. It was fine. We always have the hummingbird welcome sign up above our mantle, except at Christmas. It was hand carved by my Dad and we love it. But I didn't like how the two groupings of items on each side looked unbalanced.

Then I had the idea to use an old piece of garden fencing to create a special display for our mantle. This fencing was left behind from the previous owners of our house.

I've recycled these fence pieces into a few things, including this jewelry organizer and display. I've posted directions and more photos for this jewelry project on my blog.

To make my Halloween display, I grabbed some simple supplies: a piece of black card stock (construction paper or poster board would also work), a pencil, scissors, basic office tape, and glitter glue (optional).

I took some scrap paper and drew some basic bat shapes in three different sizes. These shapes are just general, kind of cartoon images of bats. They don't need to be perfect. Then I cut out my three different shapes to use as templates.

I traced my bat shapes on to the black card stock. I made a few bats of each size to fill up my fence piece. Then just for fun, I added a border of black glitter glue to each bat. This is optional, but I liked how it looked on my bats and I already had the glitter glue on hand.

Once my glitter glue was completely dry, I arranged my bats across my fence so they looked like they were in flight, with the smaller ones at the top, moving into the distance.

Then I taped each bat in place from the back, running the tape across the length of their wings. You could also use super glue to be more permanent, but I might want to use this fence piece for something else in the future.

I propped my fence piece behind my pumpkin display on my mantle. I think it looks great and adds height to that side of my fall mantle. I made these pumpkin candle holders for this fall too. You can find the tutorial on my blog.

Hope you have a wonderful fall season and a Happy Halloween!