Colorful Candy Halloween Mantel

This colorful candy Halloween mantel was inspired by Nerds and SweetTarts. It combines the fun candy colors with a few black and white pieces for a festive mantel. Best of all, it can later be handed out to trick or treaters or enjoyed by you! 

I’m so terrible about photographing and getting my home decor up on the blog within a reasonable time frame! Here we are, the week of Halloween, and I’m just now sharing my mantel. It’s been decorated since the beginning of the month, but I just never bothered to share. Which is weird because I actually really love this mantel! It may be one of my favorites that I’ve ever done. I always let symmetry, what people will think and practicality get in my head and I end up overthinking and am never 100% in love with what I come up with. This year I committed to 2 things: spend a minimal amount of money and HAVE FUN!  The result was this fun, colorful candy Halloween mantel. 

I’ve been embracing my love of color more and more when it comes to home decor, so I really wanted to incorporate color beyond orange and black for Halloween this year. I was brainstorming what I could use that would add a little color, but still be Halloween-y, and it suddenly hit me: CANDY! I personally love SweetTarts and Nerds, so that’s what I picked to use with my decorations. They are bright, fun and perfect for a colorful candy Halloween mantel. In retrospect, having my favorite candy sitting on the mantle staring at me all day may not have been the smartest idea. I’ve totally given in to temptation and grabbed a few treats while watching TV at night. 

Jesse’s latest hobby gave me a lot of fun colorful backdrops to choose from. He’s been creating abstract art in a variety of colors, so I just picked from one of his 50 paintings in the garage. I tried to find the ones that reflected the colors of Nerds and SweetTarts the most, but they aren’t all the same color or style to keep it visually interesting. I’ve been really into layering art for the backdrop of my mantels because it adds so much dimension (and, of course, color!) 

I spent a total of $6 on this mantel because the only “new” thing that I purchased were the little black and white pumpkins and the candy, everything else is from my bin of Halloween decorations! It can be so hard year after year to not buy all of the cute new decor that’s out in stores, but I try to remind myself that I have plenty of decor at home and it all just ends up in storage after a few weeks. And the candy may seem like a waste, but I plan on handing out whatever I don’t eat to trick or treaters. 

All of the decorations for my colorful candy Halloween mantel either came from Target or At Home, though I did make a few of them several years ago. I’m a fan of buying seasonal decor on clearance and saving it, or buying smaller items at a cheaper price in general. None of the items are online anymore, but here’s a list of where I got everything anyway so you can be on the lookout next year. (From left to right):

Green pumpkin – Dollar Tree foam pumpkin (I painted it all green so it wasn’t bright punch-you-in-the-face orange anymore.)

Black and white mini pumpkins – Target Dollar Spot

White pumpkin with sprinkles – At Home

Colorful mini skulls – At Home

Trick or Treat sign – Target Dollar Spot

White pumpkin with long stem – Real from a local pumpkin patch

Grey ceramic mini pumpkin – Target Dollar Spot

Black glitter pumpkin – Target Dollar Spot

Green ceramic mini pumpkin – Target Dollar Spot

Bat and ghost garland – The bats and ghosts came from JoAnn Fabric, but I made the garland

I feel proud of myself for taking my decorating in an entirely different direction this year, without spending a lot of money, to create this colorful candy Halloween mantel. It was a bit of a creative challenge and it has me feeling more inspired for the rest of my holiday decor! And now that I’ve shared it, I’m free to eat Nerds and SweetTarts while watching Hocus Pocus tonight… Happy Halloween! 

Check out some of my past Halloween mantels here:
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