I love Halloween! I love to decorate the house in spooky Halloween decor, but as usual, I don’t always find what I’m looking for. I happened to come across this plain black witches brew bucket for a great price at a discount store and knew that I could elevate the look of it to match the rest of my decor.
Above are a few pictures of the black bucket, after I wiped it down with a 50% rubbing alcohol and 50% water mixture to remove any dirt or oil that may have been on the plastic. After that, I taped off the inside of the bucket so I didn’t get any spray paint in there. I just used a brown paper bag and some FrogTape that I had at home.
I decided to spray this bucket gold, because it’s one of my favorite colors, and because I know it would really pop against the other decor. I started out by spraying one light coat for gold, top side down, then added a second coat after waiting for it to dry. I used Rust-Oleum Metallic Gold that is seen in the picture. I bought mine at Home Depot, where there is also a Rust-Oleum Silver Metallic available.
When it was completely dry, I flipped the bucket back on the base and sprayed the rim of the bucket gold, that I knew I missed when it was flipped over. I then sprayed Rust-Oleum Ultra Cover Matte Clear sealer which bonds to plastic and will help prevent the gold from stretching or chipping.
After the sealer was completely dry, I wanted to add some glitter to this bucket, because why not? I used the Martha Stewart Crafts decoupage glue and sealer which I found at Michaels along with the black Glitter that I also found there. If you can’t find the decoupage glue, Mod Podge glue and sealer works just as well which you can also find at Michaels. I used the brush that came in the bottle to apply the glue around the fake handles of the bucket and the rim of the bucket, then applied the glitter to the glue and waited for it to dry.
I wanted to make sure the glitter would stay on the bucket well, so I decided I would seal the bucket again with the Rust-Oleum clear sealer. It did dull the glitter a bit, but still looks great and I knew the glitter would stay where I put it!
I then set up my Cricut Explore Air Gold, that I purchased from JoAnn Fabric, and selected two images from my Cricut library, and cut them out of a 651 black vinyl. The size of the image would depend on the size of the bucket you have. The Witches Brew decal was measured at 3 x 4.5 and the Unfiltered Poison is 3 x 4. The tools that I used for this project were the weeding tool, which looks like something your dentist would use, and the scraper.
After you cut the image out of vinyl you have to “weed” or remove the unwanted pieces of the vinyl so you can just see the image you cut. Make sure to weed out the pieces in between the letters, such as the small triangle you can handly see when you cut out a capital A. Unfortunately, I have made this mistake before but didn’t realize it till after the project was done.
After you have removed the unwanted vinyl, you want to take a piece of vinyl transfer tape, shown in the picture below, and cut it to the size of the image. What is great about the Cricut transfer tape, is the grid that is printed on the tape. This will help you align and center the image, so when you are ready to apply the decal it goes on straight the first time.
As you can see in the picture I found the center of the bucket and applied the Witches Brew decal to the bucket and used the scraper to essentially rub the vinyl off onto the bucket. The best way to apply this vinyl is to start from the center of the image and rub your way out to the corners. Continue rubbing out the image of any bubbles or bumps before you peel off the transfer tape.
I followed the same procedure on the backside of this bucket to apply the Unfiltered Poison decal as seen in the picture below.
I have now completed the look I was going for, sprayed the bucket gold, applied glitter, and decals to make my Spooky Halloween bucket come alive. But there was just one more thing to do, you guessed it, I sprayed the entire bucket again with the Rust-Oleum clear sealer to ensure the glitter and decal stay in place.
What do you think? I loved the way my Halloween bucket turned out. When I first started this project I thought I would make this for me, but as soon as I figured out what I wanted to do, I knew that this would be perfect for a family friend as a house warming gift and she loved it! Please let me know if you have any questions or comments on this project as I would be happy to help.
XO Christine