Spooky portraits

It’s become a tradition to put framed family pictures right into our Christmas tree, and I thought doing the same for Halloween would evoke the Haunted Mansion vibe I was going for on one of my trees. I didn’t happen to have any particularly spooky relatives, so I turned to the internet for help.

I got that great portrait of the man laughing from this amazing site. Vintage Printable is just one of the greatest resources there is, particularly if you’re looking for something to frame. Just incredible, nearly too good to be true stuff.

I can’t find where I got the image of the girl. Maybe a google image search? That’s my standard M.O.

I pasted them both into a word document, sized them the right size for the cheap dollar store frames I got, and sent them off to the copy shop for printing. For the packing tape image transfer method, the pictures have to come off a machine that uses toner. So an old-fashioned copier is the way to go.

Cover the whole image with clear packing tape, overlapping each layer slightly to make sure you get the whole thing covered. Then soak the whole thing in water until the paper begins to dissolve leaving the toner stuck to the tape. Since I’m going for spooky, it worked in my favor to not be super clean. I left some of the paper in place to add to the distress of the image.

I cut a couple of pieces of cardstock to the size that would fit my frame and stuck them to the tape transfers. I used this cool gray parchment style paper that kept the eerie distressed look going.

Then just cut off the rest of the tape and stick the images inside your frame.

I just prop these up in the branches of my tree, but you could put these anywhere. A whole series of these hanging on the wall might even be too creepy for me to live with. I think I’ll keep mine on a smaller scale.