Halloween can be a lot of things – scary, sexy, creepy, funny, violent, traditional, retro, fun and childish, amongst some of the other spooky elements of October 31st. Something that came across from a lot of different Halloween themed parties that was featured on the Hostess with the Mostess blog was basing the spooky elements of Halloween against a vintage or rustic style backdrop, which is a great idea to blend the ideals and styles together for an interestingly decorated Halloween party!
When you think rustic or that kind of old, grainy style vintage, you think wooden block tables and chairs, tan and dark brown colour palettes, tin sheds and wax candles. Harbour these ideas together and mix in the Halloween element of the dark and the frightening. Here are some different parties that were put together, that act as fantastic inspiration for your own rustic style Halloween:
Photo by Tammy Mitchell at Pink Peppermint Prints and Parties
This first image comes from an amazingly interesting “Bone Appetite” Halloween party theme, which had a garden setting but incorporated the rustic elements into the party using the garden’s already existing wooden picket fences, as well as the added peeling wooden table and tin water trough base. You can do something similar in regards to putting the table together by finding a tin base and then getting an old wooden door from your local recycle centre. Clean it up and sit in on top of your base and you have an instant rustic table! Perfect!
To help blend the rustic with the dark Halloween elements, use more classic Horror items to decorate the table, such as old, leather bound books, classic polished silver jugs that act as a vase for a bouquet of black roses and black candelabras with melting wax candles in them. From there, you can add a few modern twists of Halloween, such as fake spiders and cobwebs, glittering silver skulls and jars of Halloween “organs” like eyeballs or blood vials. Make it creepy, but without the gory violence. Buckets of blood and gore are just not necessary in this style of Halloween parties.
Photo by Tammy Mitchell at Pink Peppermint Prints and Parties
Once your centrepiece is together you can start setting the table. Using cheesecloths as a napkin setting piece, HWTM added a cute sugar skull bread plate from Pottery Barn as the main centrepiece for the plates. Use cobweb placemats for the drink glassware and add a few spiders to tie it all together. Super cute!
Photo by Modern Moments Designs
For a Creepy Witches Brew Halloween Party, an awesome idea is to set up a cute cauldron style food decoration. Pottery Barn has adorable cauldron condiment set that hangs from a black bar. Put a series of guacamole, salsa and chilli dip for guests to use with crackers for the cauldrons. You can also purchase cauldrons and full them full of chocolates and other party snacks. Delicious!
Photo by Modern Moments Designs
Another great idea is using a glass cauldron to hold some delicious bubbling witches punch. You can get an amazing witches’ brew recipe from My Recipes and then add some dry ice to the mixture to make it bubble and foam like a real witches cauldron. You can use white cloth netting around the cauldron to add a touch of spiderweb to the punch – just don’t forget the ladle!
Photo by Modern Moments Designs
I love these cookies from Oh Sugar! Events which were designed for the Hostess with the Mostess Witches Brew party. They are amazingly decorated with sugar icing and fondant, and the little spider cookies on top are a fantastic touch to the spiderweb style cookies. Display them on the amazing spiderweb cake tower that is also available from Pottery Barn makes an amazing look for the food table. Love it!
Photo by Modern Moments Designs
And all in all, you can’t go past an incredibly spooky and delicious looking cake like this one created by Lamb’s Bakery. Piping black spiderwebs onto the cake and adding a few spiders to the cake make great decorational toppers. Delicious! Use the spiderweb cheesecloth to add to the decorations and put it underneath the cake stand. The cheesecloth makes a great vintage aspect to the rustic Halloween and still makes things creepy and haunted to add to the air of spookiness.
So all in all, rustic style Halloween makes for a fun, gory-less theme for a party. Vintage rustic style themed decorations are definitely the IT trend for the time and if you have your own vintage style party, Halloween or not, I would love to see it! Send me some photos to thepartyconnection@hotmail.com
Until then, Love and Cobwebs!
xx Courtney xx
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