I love decking the mantel of Darcy Miller Designs Studio for every season, occasion, and celebration. For our first Halloween in the Studio, we worked with our creative friends at Going Out in Style to create something spooky but sophisticated.
Going Out in Style is a team of designers and stylists who plan personalized funerals and memorial events. We asked them for a Halloween scene that would delight both the living and the undead, and they brought magic to our mantel.
Here’s how to set the scene for your own scary-but-chic Halloween:
–Start with a minimalist black, gold, and white color palette
–Add dramatic black drapery
–Create a focal point like this oversized gold spider web
–Scatter crows, ravens, rats, and more creepy critters around
–Display black roses—a faux flower or spray paint real ones
–Spray toy insects and vermin gold
–Set out pitch black bottles that let guests pick their poison
–Slip a mask around anything that doesn’t move
–Spotlight “specimens”—from gold bugs to black flowers—in cloches
–Frame “fangs”
The effect is tongue-in-chic, minimalist-meets-macabre, and the ideas are a great way to dress up any space for Halloween—if you dare!
Spiderweb decor can be elegant and eerie if you weave your web with some gold wire and a little gold spraypaint. To make your own spooky-and-shiny showstopper, click here.
Black masquerade eye shades make everything spookier and swankier at the same time. Click here to make your own masks.
Crows and spiders are even creepier when you stumble across them somewhere unexpected—like the faux crows and gold-spray-painted spider scattered around our shelves.
1. Black Candles, 2. Fake Crows, 3. Fake Bats, 4. Candle Sticks, 5. Storage Jar, 6. Black Flower, 7. Gold Spider, 8. Brass Vases
Here’s a decorative touch you can really sink your teeth into: A framed pair of gilded fangs. Click here for a how-to.
Cloche Call: Rare specimens, including oversized gold bugs (with stick-on gem eyes), paper flowers (made by the creepy crew at Going Out In Style!), and black-spray-painted live blossoms, were showcased in glass cloches.
Black bottles with customized scary labels let guests pick their own poison. To make your own eerie labels, click here.
1. Frame, 2. Gold Spray Paint, 3. Pumpkin, 4. Fangs, 5. Fake Snake, 6. Fake Spiders, 7. Black Fabric, 8. Bust, 9. Fake Crow