If you’ve followed me for long, you probably know that I’ve taken quite a few cast off cupboard doors and turned them into ‘signs’ using stencils.

I’ve done a few signs with garden themes, and lots of signs for Christmas.

But I’m noticing that sales on these have kind of slowed down.  I had quite a few of them at my sale back in June that did not go.

So I’m taking a step back from producing quite so many.

That being said, I did pick up an awesome pair of old cupboard doors at a garage sale earlier this summer.

And I certainly didn’t want them to go to waste.

So I pulled out the smaller one a week or so ago and after giving it a good cleaning, I decided to give it a Halloween look.  Now that September is officially here, I think it’s OK to start transitioning to autumn, right?

I just happened to have a stencil on hand that fit perfectly.

Rather than painting the door first, I decided to keep the original finish.  I just simply added the stencil using Dixie Belle chalk style paint in Ecru.

I usually like to add a shadow behind the larger wording on stencils.  For example, you can see that on the Bed & Breakfast sign below …

I do that by first stenciling the words in a darker color, and then moving the stencil slightly up and over and stenciling again in my final color.

But the wording on this particular stencil was just a bit too fine for that to work.  So instead I added a little bit of shading using Dixie Belle’s French Villa from their new Countryside Collection.

It’s definitely subtle, but I think it adds just a little bit more dimension.

Once the paint was dry, I sanded over everything with 220 grit sandpaper and then I followed that up with Dixie Belle’s Big Mama’s Butta.

The original wood finish really need a bit of a refresh, and the Butta was perfect for that.

Last up, I added a little metal ’13’ to the lower part of the door.

I left all of the original hardware in place because I thought it provided some nice vintage charm.

I put a sawtooth hanger on the back so that it could be hung on the wall, but I rather like it just leaning … maybe on a mantle or at the back of a bookshelf.

Unfortunately, I didn’t seem to have any ‘witchy’ sort of items to use for staging my photos so I made do with a beaker, some bottles and a stack of old books.

I think this particular cupboard door sign would be a unique bit of Halloween decor, how about you?

I plan to hang onto it for my upcoming occasional sale.  I’m planning to have the sale on Saturday, October 4, rain or shine (fingers crossed that it’s both sunny and relatively warm), so if you’re local, be sure to mark your calendar!