“When hinges creak in doorless chambers, and strange and frightening sounds echo through the halls. Whenever candlelights flicker where the air is deathly still. That is the time when ghosts are present, practicing their terror with ghoulish delight!”
~The Haunted Mansion Ride
I grew up going to Disneyland every summer with my parents, grandparents, siblings, and cousins. Some of my fondest childhood memories have Disneyland as their backdrop.
Like sitting on the stone fence outside of the Haunted Mansion as a little girl and eating snacks with my grandpa who always offered to sit off the ride with me because I was too afraid to go inside. Or as a tween waiting until dark to ride the Haunted Mansion with my cousins…only to get off the ride and race around to get in line for another trip! Or (one of my favorite recent memories) a trip to Disneyland with my adult siblings where we stayed too late, laughed to loud, ran too much, and chose the Haunted Mansion as our last ride of the night.
I love that ride…my family thinks it’s because I’m a closet Goth…but there is just something about it.
When I was young I marveled at the magic…the atmosphere…the imagery.
Now that I am an adult I still marvel at imagery but also at the ambiance that has been created by the attention to detail and design of artists and craftsman.
So when Jo-Ann Fabric and Craft Store approached us about creating a spooky space for Halloween the first thing that of course came to mind was my favorite spooky space:
However, as I brainstormed ideas I decided that I didn’t want to try to copy a room or attempt to duplicate any portion of The Haunted Mansion. Instead I wanted to create a Halloween space that was inspired by it. So I drew from the color palate, the style, and feeling of the Haunted Mansion to make a Halloween-scape in my house.
And I knew just where I wanted to create it:
It was a lot of fun to make. I gathered together items I already had in my home and then after taking inventory (and a quick trip to Jo-Ann) I started putting things together…adding something here…painting something there…antiquing this frame…gluing down that doily…until I had everything just the way I wanted it.
Over the next few weeks we will be sharing tutorials on how we made, altered, or put together items for this wall. Most of my favorite things here only took a few minutes and required minimal supplies.
Here is a “map’ of the wall. Everywhere that you see a * that is a project that we used supplies from Jo-Ann and that we will be sharing a tutorial for.
The supplies that we used included: acrylic paint, gloss, spray paint, doilies, embroidery floss, upholstery fabric, duck cloth, googly eyes, muslin, and hot glue.
I had so much fun making, putting together, or gathering each item…
The only hard part was photographing it!
Would you believe these pictures were taken at night?
We didn’t intend on an evening photo shoot but our attempts to just change one little thing before we got started lead to one disaster after another…
And by the time we got around to taking photographs we had broken 2 panes of glass, destroyed a pair of shoes, had become stranded on a ledge, and then there was that little episode of me exclaiming curse words while leaping down the stairs with my hands in the air desperately trying to catch an air born cake stand.
(I’m telling you it’s Lucy and Ethel in the chocolate factory every time Elizabeth and I get together…but at least this time I wasn’t running Elizabeth over with my mini van.)
But I digress….
As I was saying, I suppose it only seems fitting that the pictures were taken at night…because after all, that is the best time to experience The Haunted Mansion.
-liZ
PS: As the tutorials posted over the next few weeks we will add the links to those posts here:
Here are the tutorials for 5 of the Halloween Wall Hangings that can be made for $5 or less!
That is a spectacular wall! What detail and brilliance went into that vignette! great work. And did I miss the story about the mini van mishap? Please post a link if there is one!
Amazing! I have a great wall in my staircase that could showcase something like this. I can’t wait for your tutorials 🙂
I have a pesky ledge over my stairs too. Way to make it cute! Love it 🙂
Love it! And the haunted mansion. 🙂
I think once upon a time we posted about it over on Facebook….it was one of our late night pattern drafting mishaps!
Holy smokes this is amazing!!!!