The Royal Treatment

This past weekend I hosted my annual Halloween Dinner Party! This party is always one of my most favorite events of the Halloween Season! I’ll be honest, I kind of live for hosting parties.  So when I get to combine creating a party theme with my favorite time of the year and then get to share it with my friends…. it doesn’t get better than that!  This year’s party was a far cry from last year’s earthy and moody Witches’ Dinner Party.  Instead…. a display of luxury, wealth and drama with a dark twist… a Skull King and Queen Halloween Dinner Party…

Let’s talk about how this table came to be….

Early on in my planning phase, I knew I wanted to have a skull at each place setting.  A million years ago I walked into some store, who had skulls set around one of their dinner table displays and I was enthralled.  I have wanted to do something similar ever since.  In fact, I attempted it a few years ago, but for some reason had to bail on the design and go with something else.  This year, I was determined to finally make it happen. I just needed to figure out what I wanted to do with the skulls.

If you happened to catch my last post on the DIY Faux Antique Gold Technique I am using as part of this table, you may remember me mentioning the Vanitas Still Lifes that served as inspiration for some of the details I am incorporating into the table design.  It was not uncommon for the skulls in the artwork to be wearing crowns.  I have a weird thing for crowns…. Maybe I was a queen in my past life? 🙂 Crowns are one of those things that I find myself often bringing home from antique stores.  They seem to be scattered about my house… sitting atop busts, finials, stacks of books, dress forms…. but my favorite – atop skulls!  Shock, I know.  I’ve always had a habit of crowning random skulls around my house.  So, the more I admired the art, and the more I looked around my house, it became obvious what I would do.

That one decision to crown my skulls was all I needed to pave the way for the theme of the table.  What do you think of when you see a crown?  Royalty.  What do you think of when you hear of Royalty?  Wealth and Riches….. and there you have it.  A table full of antique gold, jewels, rich velvets, and royal colors.

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I’ll warn you that this article is pretty heavy with pictures, but I wouldn’t want you to miss a detail!  Now, let’s take a look at what I did, why I did, how I did, and where you can find similar items…

For the base of the table I used a Burgundy Velvet Table Runner.  Now… I did not want just any old table runner.  Most importantly it had to be velvet… I wanted a luxurious kind of velvet… I wanted silk velvet!  Have you ever felt silk velvet?  Holy crap… so nice.  I’m a bit obsessed with that fabric.  It’s not to say that there aren’t other gorgeous and luxurious looking velvet runner options… it’s just that if I have an opportunity to add silk velvet to the mix, I do.  Next I wanted to use only royal colors on my table, so this dark shade of red was perfect.  Lastly, I was looking for drama, and when it comes to table runners… there are two ways to achieve drama… the runner can puddle to the floor, or be loosely gathered along the center of table.  I opted for both.  But keep in mind… either of those options will add a considerable amount of length to the runner, as well as price. I purchased mine on Etsy, but sadly the shop seems to have closed.  I’ll keep a lookout for it to re-open (because I want to order more!!) and will update this post accordingly.  I did find one other shop that offers some beautiful velvet options in royal colors…  a Purple Silk Velvet Runner, a Red Velvet Runner, and Burgundy Velvet Runner.  I also found this Burgundy Italian Velvet Runner… it is only available in one size, but the price is significantly less if it were to fit your table.

Candelabras…you really can’t set a royal table without them.  Turns out almost every candelabra in my house is black, so instead of breaking the bank on new ones, I collected several gold ones while out treasure hunting through estate sales, antique markets and thrift stores.  Candelabras are the sort of thing that is ALWAYS a great find when treasure hunting, because they can really add a lot of character to almost any table.  If I had my way, the candelabras would have been a bit chunkier, but beggars can’t be choosers, and to compensate…. two of the candelabras were unusually tall, which added drama.  I also had some chunky antique gold candlesticks which I mixed in.  And lastly, I used long black taper candles to give even more height and drama.  I absolutely love a room lit entirely by candles.  Especially when it’s Halloween… it certainly adds to the ambiance!  If you’re not lucky enough to happen upon some candelabras at your local charity shop, this Antique Style 5 Arm Candelabra looks similar to one I have.  And this 24 1/2″ Gold Candelabra has the dramatic height like my others.  Keep in mind… if you end up finding a candelabra that is a bit too shiny gold, don’t pass it up!  It’s ridiculously easy to make it look aged.  Read on to find out how.

Originally I planned on creating a few floral arrangements full of flowers in dark shades of purple, pink, and red.  But when I started playing around with the arrangements, I found them to be competing with the candelabras.  So… in lieu of flowers, I went with bowls of fruit (with a handful of flowers tucked into a few spots).  The height of the bowls no longer competed with the candelabras, and I was still able to fill the bowls with the original color scheme.  I used dark red globe grapes, dark purple moon drop grapes, black cherries, dark red apples, figs, blackberries, and red pears.  As for the bowls… it gave me another opportunity to mix some antique pieces into the table.  How awesome is the one with the figurehead!  A find from an antique market!  I had two antique gold bowls, but because of the long length of the table, I wanted a third.  I turned to my pile of treasures, and found a beautiful carved wood bowl sitting atop a pedestal of lions feet.  This piece actually came from a thrift store (lion heads and claw feet… two more things I never pass up at thrift stores)!  To make it fit with the table, I applied the Antique Gold Faux Finish Technique.

To fill the rest of the table… I turned to several of those crowns scattered around my house that I mentioned earlier.  Most were already a gold finish, but for any that weren’t, again I used the Faux Antique Gold Technique .  I also purchased some strands of glass Christmas beads.  Before draping them onto the candelabras, I coated them completely with Burnt Umber Paint, and then used a paper towel to dab some of the paint off.

Onto the place settings…. For those of you that read my previous article, you already know all about the charger plates I used for this table.  For those of you that haven’t… I collected several styles of carved charger plates, and gave them all an Antique Gold makeover.  Read the article for the full DIY Faux Antique Gold Tutorial.  Not interested in getting your hands dirty?  These Embossed Chargers are the exact same style as some that I used, and they’re already painted gold.  These Embossed Chargers are also the same as other ones I used, and again, already painted gold.  On top of the gold chargers, I layered a glass dish and a black salad plate.  I chose glass so you could see more of the gold finish of the chargers.  If you don’t need a salad plate, a black dinner plate will do.

Had to stick with all things luxe, even with the napkins, so it should be no surprise that again, I went with velvet.  This time I chose a black crushed velvet.  If the company that made my table runner had also made coordinating napkins, I may have stuck with the same fabric and color, but they didn’t.  My feeling is that if something is not going to match (like the color or the fabric) don’t even try to get close… it will look like a mistake if it’s not perfect.  Just go for something completely different.  I actually liked that I was able to mix in two different textures with the table linens.  I felt that another royal color would have taken away from the table runner, so I went with trusty black.  With the black candles, the black skulls, and the black dishes… a black napkin tied right in.  I tucked each napkin between the charger and dinner plate.

Sitting atop each place setting were my skulls.  Originally, when my only inspiration was having a skull at each place setting, I had no color story in mind.  But you have to love how things just happen to fall in place sometimes.  I was in the beginning phases of working on a “royalty” theme for the Halloween table, when I came across these black and gold skulls in Tuesday Morning.  They were the perfect size, and the perfect weight, and I liked the facial features.  Check, check, and check!  That settled that… the table would be black and gold.  I drove around to a few different Tuesday Mornings, and bought them out of their skulls.  I ended up with way more than I needed, but who’s counting! 😉  If you weren’t lucky enough to snag some skulls during your Halloween shopping trips, I found these coordinating skulls online… a Gold Skull and a Black Skull.

Obviously I needed a crown for each of my skulls.  While I do own a surprising number of crowns, none of them really fit on the skulls I had purchased for the table.  Either they were too big, or they didn’t conform to the skull and would slide right off.  I wanted each skull to have a different crown.  This isn’t necessary… I’m just fond of mismatched pieces.  For two of the skulls I ordered small metal crowns.  The were small enough and lightweight enough to sit on top of the skulls without slipping.  For the Gold Metal Crown, I simply rubbed the Burnt Umber Paint into the crevices, wiped it away, and voila.  For the Black Metal Crown, I rubbed a bit of Antique Gold Rub ‘n Buff over the raised edges.  Then began the fun part… I collected a handful of those cheap plastic child’s princess crowns.  I recommend avoiding any of the crowns with heart shapes or jewels… they’ll always look like “princess dress-up crowns”.  The child size fit the skulls perfectly, and because of the open back and slightly flexible plastic, I could conform the crowns onto the skulls and they wouldn’t move.  Before working on them, pop out any removable rhinestones, and clip off the hair combs.  I wanted the black skulls to have gold crowns, and vice versa, so I painted the crowns accordingly.  I gave my typical Antique Gold Faux finish to the gold painted crowns, and used the Antique Gold Rub ‘n Buff to add gold to the surface of the black crowns.  Before starting the project, I collected a bunch of small jewels, stickers, and trimmings to use for decoration.  In the images above, the first one I used decorative stickers to replace the plastic rhinestones I had removed and on the second, I used 3 dimensional clear rhinestone stickers.  I got a bit more creative on the third one…. the plastic jewels were not removable, so I took metal nail head trim, painted each piece gold with the rub n buff, and then glued them over the existing jewels.  They fit perfectly!  Here are several plastic crown designs you could use….

In the early phases of planning, I had intended on creating DIY Goblets or Chalices…. and then I happened across a large set of actual pewter goblets in an antique market.  What a find!  That is, until I found the skulls, and pewter no longer worked with my black & gold color scheme.  I was bummed because I was dead set on my kings and queens having goblets… Gotta stay on theme!  To my surprise, At Home had an early launch of Halloween decor, and a friend tipped me off that they were carrying black glassware.  Honestly, I would have assumed they were plastic and never would have even driven an hour to the store, so it was a true twist of fate that they found me.  Best yet… they were black glass goblets!!  What a score.  And if you happened to read my first post of the Halloween Season… DIY Antique Bird Claw Candlesticks…. these are the glasses I was talking about!  Interesting that I had given up on At Home’s Halloween selection… and now I can thank them for contributing to both my first and last post of the Halloween season!

To finish off the place setting… the seating cards.  I am a firm believer in seating cards at any dinner party.  Putting the right mix of people together leads to great conversation which leads to great dinner parties.  With this particular place setting, there was no room on the actual plate to place a card, which is typical.  Instead, I made cards attached to a royal looking key, and placed beside each setting.  The keys were actually Christmas ornaments… and were bright shiny gold.  A coat of Burnt Umber Paint will take care of that.  Just wipe a bit of the paint away to leave an Antique finish key.  to make the cards, I used a 2 1/2″ Circle Punch to cut circles out of Black Heavyweight Cardstock.  I then used my finger to gently wipe the Antique Gold Rub ‘n Buff  around the edge of each circle.  Lastly, each name was handwritten with a Gold Paint Pen.

The only piece of this table that didn’t come together quite as I had planned were the chairs.  I bought these cool, carved wood dining chairs at an Antique Market.  They were subtle yet beautiful.  Seats were covered in a vintage red velvet and finished with brass nail head trim.  The problem?  If you go any Antique mall, you’ll quickly see that the “Paint Everything in White or Cream Chalk Paint” movement is still going strong.  And yes, someone decided to ruin these chairs by painting them in white chalk paint.  ugh.  I took them home with intentions of bringing them back to their Gothic glory… keeping the red velvet but giving the wood a black and antique gold finish.  They would have been PERFECT for this table.  Sadly, the project did not make it to completion… that idiot I mentioned didn’t bother to remove the cushion or nail head before painting it, and I was forced to scrape the white paint off of each nail head one by one!  Shoot me!  Moral of the story, dark chairs would have looked way better with this table.  I’m not suggesting to go out and buy chairs just to fit a table design, but if you have access to chairs that are darker in color… borrow those.

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