Upcycled Halloween Countdown

Halloween is getting closer! And if you're like me and love the holiday... or have kids that are already so excited they are talking about Halloween nonstop, it's probably a good idea to make some sort of a countdown.

And this one started out life in an unusual way- as countertop swatches.

A while back I was trying to pick a color for some laminate countertop and ended up with loads of the little sample chips. But once the color had been picked and we they weren't need anymore I felt bad about throwing this pile of chips away. So I decided I'd come up with some use for them.

Then it hit me that since these were already the same size, shape, and made to hang off a hook, they'd be perfect thing for a countdown board.

I started by painting the swatch tiles green. Then I printed and cutout some numbers and decoupaged them onto each of the tiles.

Cutting out these all these delicate little numbers was tedious, it definitely would have been faster to paint the numbers. But I wanted a very crisp looking font, and for me the only way I get that was to decoupage the characters.

For the sign I used two wooden shapes (an owl and a rectangle) that I found at the craft store.

I painted them using a Halloween inspired pallet of light and dark purple, green, orange, and black.

Then I glued the rectangle and owl together and decopodged my message onto the rectangular board. Last but not least, I sealed the whole thing.

To hold the countdown tiles I screwed small teacup hooks into the rectangular board. Before screwing the hooks in, I bent them so they'd be straighter. That way the tiles are easier to change.

If your not into Halloween, this same technique would work for anything you'd want a countdown for- other holidays, birthdays, first day of school, vacation. You could even use the same idea to make a perpetual calendar.