Vintage Halloween

Halloween is a big deal around our house. And while I love all things Halloween, I would have to say that some of my favorite collectibles are our vintage ones. Most of the vintage items we have are reproductions, either we've made them to look old ourselves, or purchased them that way.

True Halloween antiques are extremely expensive. A lot of the materials used to make decorations back in the day were paper or cloth, which as antiques go, are high ticket items because they don't last the years.

You can find old children's costumes with paper masks on-line or in selective antique stores. These go for some big money because the material used was so cheap to begin with, to make the costume more affordable, so any that have made through the years void of moths, mice or just plain carelessness, are quite the find. There are some paper mache candy buckets and lanterns that I would love to get my hands on, but they start at around $100 for little ones, and go up from there.

So instead, we have quite a few things that only look old, but still give that old fashioned feel. These are Halloween Noisemakers. The pumpkin rattles, the witch zips around on a wind up contraption, and the bat rings like a bell.

We made this cat some years ago, I saw the face on a website that provides free vintage clip art. I simply re-drew the face on a piece of cardboard, cut it out painted it and glued it together with hot glue.

You don't have to be an artist to make an old fashion Halloween look-a-like, many of the faces and "art" were very basic and sort of crooked looking anyway.

We got these two pieces in Salem, there is a TON of vintage Halloween in Salem!

Another fun thing to collect are vintage postcards. You can find some of the real thing for relatively inexpensive. We have a few with writing still on them. This one is a reproduction from Salem.

This porcelain bowl has vintage postcard images all around the rim.

Another good thing to try when re-creating vintage holiday items is glitter. Especially if you can find that cool old glass glitter. We made this cat out of an oatmeal container.