Halloween Magic:  A Bewitching Pumpkin Fairy Garden (Green Thumb Not Required!)

Artificial fairy gardens can be just as fun as fairy gardens made with real plants and flowers.  They’re a fun accent for your home all year round.  And during the colder months, you’re limited to indoor fairy gardens or artificial gardens anyway (fauxry gardens?), so that’s the perfect time to try one.  In past years, I’ve enjoyed making fairy gardens for Christmas and Valentine’s Day using artificial snow.

This is my first year bringing my Halloween fairy garden indoors.  The last couple of years, I’ve had one outside. As long as they’re set up early enough in September to enjoy throughout the fall, outdoor fairy gardens work well for Halloween unless you live in a particularly cold climate.  Depending on how cold fall in Indiana is, sometimes mine look a little dead by the time Halloween rolls around – but I guess dead works too for a Halloween theme, doesn’t it?

This year mom gave me this adorable pumpkin base from JoAnn’s she bought on sale.  I wanted to start making my Halloween display the moment I got my hands on it.  The surface is 12 x 12 inches, which gives you a lot of real estate to work with for a shaped container.   I found the color-changing haunted house at Michael’s.  It wasn’t in their Halloween fairy garden section, but the size is perfect and I like how it is all black for the background.  I set a ghost by the entrance of the house.  The sweet witch fairy is from JoAnn’s a few years ago and she’s my favorite part of the scene even though she’s a little faded from the sun in years past.  I am also quite fond of the black cat holding the pumpkin who is ready for trick or treating, which I got this year at Michael’s.

I made the Halloween banner by folding and cutting pennant shapes from metallic orange crafting tape wrapped around black and white baker’s twine.  I used black letter stickers to spell out Halloween.  I strung up the banner using the tree and a mini shepherd’s hook.   It was the only fussy part of the display as it was tricky to get the spacing just so and the pennants semi-uniform in appearance.  The rest of my design came together in minutes.

I’m loving this spooky scene and won’t want to take it down come November!  Do you decorate for Halloween?  Leave a comment; I’d love to hear about your favorite ways to decorate for Halloween or your favorite Halloween traditions.