{"id":21136,"date":"2014-03-11T06:30:17","date_gmt":"2014-03-11T11:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/?p=21136"},"modified":"2014-03-02T17:46:25","modified_gmt":"2014-03-02T22:46:25","slug":"easy-diy-apothecary-decoration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/?p=21136","title":{"rendered":"Easy DIY Apothecary Decoration"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Skull<\/a>The inestimable xJane sent this link<\/a> to me recently under the heading “Things It Strikes Me You Could DIY.” She’s right–this is eminently DIY-able, and would take almost no time to put together.<\/p>\n

The assembly could hardly be simpler: It’s polished stones, Spanish moss, and reindeer moss (which the blogger calls “moose moss”), layered in a jar with a prop skull and skeleton hands. All of that stuff is readily available at your local craft store or online (Save-On Crafts<\/a> is one of my favorite online sources). I really like the footed glass-and-metal apothecaries in this example, but you could use pretty much anything with see-through sides: Large canning jars, goldfish bowls, vases, brandy snifters, and so on. You could also vary the ingredients for different effects: A nautical-themed “Davy Jones’ Locker” decoration layered with dried seaweed, seashells, driftwood, and beach glass<\/a> and housed in a tarnished brass lantern would be quite striking.<\/p>\n

The site mentions a Pottery Barn decoration as the inspiration for this project. I did some looking, and as nearly as I can tell they’re referring to this<\/a>, which isn’t a purchasable item but instead just a “serving suggestion” for their skull vase fillers<\/a> (also available in glitter<\/a>). Other bloggers have been inspired by the same catalogue photo: The Gathering Place<\/a> uses smaller skulls and Spanish moss for a simpler design; I like the “Arsenic” tag on top. Strawberry Chic<\/a> layers the skulls with candy corn and dollar-store Halloween trinkets for a kitschier effect. Homespun with Love<\/a> adds spiderwebs and some kind of coarser floral material that they refer to as “fiber filler;” looks a little like pine needles.<\/p>\n

The only difficult bit, this time of year, would be digging up the skulls (so to speak). It’s annoying that so many items which we consider to be year-round decorating accessories are viewed by the wider world as seasonal props. They’re available online a few places like Skeleton Store<\/a>, Amazon<\/a>, and Oriental Trading<\/a>, and they may still turn up in dollar-store clearance bins, but for the greatest selection your best bet would probably be to wait until closer to Halloween when all the skulls come out of hiding.<\/p>\n

A couple of these would look lovely on a fireplace mantel or used as a table centerpiece, and they really are attractive enough to use as permanent decor.<\/p>\n

(Thanks, xJane!)<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The inestimable xJane sent this link to me recently under the heading “Things It Strikes Me You Could DIY.” She’s right–this is eminently DIY-able, and would take almost no time to put together. The assembly could hardly be simpler: It’s polished stones, Spanish moss, and reindeer moss (which the blogger calls “moose moss”), layered in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bad-things"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21136"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21136\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21147,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21136\/revisions\/21147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}