I love strategizing for my Holiday decor! Yes, strategizing. Even your dollar store decorations could use a little thought for a repeat theme, repeat color, or repeat materials to help your home feel cohesive.
This year for Halloween, I chose eyeballs for my repeat theme and limited my colors to black, white, and of course a drop of red! This is why I love creating Holiday decor from bargain-basement finds as I can adapt them to my current theme without any guilt.
Halloween is early enough that my container pots are still outdoors. I’ve placed my eyeball theme in some strategic pots on the walk up to the front door. A bundle of fake variegated grass spray painted black helps draw interest to the potted fern so that you look closer to see the eyes placed within. The eyes themselves are actually a Christmas sprig painted to look like eyes. Remember when you are dealing with styrofoam, don’t use spray paint as it will disintegrate the foam.
This bundle of bright red fake flowers from the dollar store pop against the potted greenery and continue the theme with plastic eyeballs hot glued to their centers. I’ve used the flowers as repeat materials on the porch itself as well.
However, I wanted people to get a taste as they first drove up to the house so I have added two large eyes in the front berm and have them focused down the street for anyone driving up. These eyes needed to be a bit larger to be viewed from a distance so I’ve actually painted two cheap plastic pumpkin buckets and filled them with rocks to keep them anchored.
Repeating design elements to bring cohesion to your decor is a basic design principle. Proper scale is another. A large porch needs a large element. My cheap fix (that also keeps with my color scheme)? Black trash bags! Cut into strips to hang at the front of the porch, they move in the wind and create a sense of the unknown when walking up to the front door. In keeping with the theme, I’ve also cut out large eyes (with fangs of course!) in plastic signboard to withstand the elements.
Maintaining your repeat theme, materials, and colors indoors will add the finishing touch to your cohesive Holiday decor. Even my DIY skull (cheap plastic skull with plastic wrap heated to shrink and stretch and painted the color of skin) gets a piece of the eyeball action!
Just because your decor is temporary or on a dollar store DIY budget doesn’t mean that easy design principles can’t help enhance the overall cohesiveness of your home!
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