Welcome to Day 25 of 25 Days of Vintage Hallowe’en Art!

If you’ve ever been through any of my other holiday vintage image series, you’ll know I always try to save the best for last. I absolutely LOVE this early 1900′s Halloween postcard, with the gorgeous witch girl holding her jack-o-lantern. I only have a tiny handful of vintage Halloween postcards, several of which are too damaged or boring to be included in this series. But I lucked out on this one, because I was able to buy it from a brand new Ebay seller who had only 4 sales – so no one else bid on it! Halloween postcards are generally the most valuable and rarest of all, averaging $35 – $60 each. So if you ever find them at a good price, snatch them up while you can!

Gorgeous Vintage Halloween Postcard to Print

Welcome to Day 24 of 25 Days of Vintage Hallowe’en Art!

Earlier this year when I was trying to build my Halloween art and ephemera collection (mostly for this series) I really tried to get creative in how to source my images. Most vintage Halloween stuff is just pricey, pricey, pricey and it didn’t make a lot of financial sense for me to spend that much $$ on the art. So I creatively thought – how about some old occult books? They are sure to have creepy demonic illustrations – yet sadly they are just as pricey as Halloween stuff – sometimes more so! One of the most famous occult books is The Dictionnaire Infernal by Collin de Plancy. The book sought to categorize the demons of the world – like a ‘dictionary’ of demons. Originally published in 1818, the book was revised several times, and in 1863 a collection of 69 illustrations were added of each demon:

Infernal Dictionary, or, a Universal Library on the beings, characters, books, deeds, and causes which pertain to the manifestations and magic of trafficking with Hell; divinations, occult sciences, grimoires, marvels, errors, prejudices, traditions, folktales, the various superstitions, and generally all manner of marvellous, surprising, mysterious, and supernatural beliefs.

For reals.

Long story short, I don’t have this book – it’s rare and totally out of my budget. Plus, once the initial novelty is over, what the heck would I do with a creepy book of demons?! I do have a different book that features several illustrations from the original, and this one is “The Demon Eurynome.” You can find the whole book digitized online right here – perfect Halloween creepiness!!

The Demon Eurynome from the 1800's Occult Book The Dictionnaire Infernal - click for larger printable art

Welcome to Day 23 of 25 Days of Vintage Hallowe’en Art!

I’ve been looking forward to posting this image today – I think that an old diagram of a skeleton from an antique encyclopedia is one of the most classic and quintessential Halloween images! Makes me think of mad scientists, murderous doctors, Jack the Ripper, and all those other macabre cliches from the early 1900′s. This is indeed from my set of 1917 encyclopedias, and I’ve included two versions – the full chart, and just the skeleton – enjoy!

Vintage Halloween Skeleton Diagram Drawing - Click for larger printable art

Antique Drawing of a Skeletal Chart - Click for larger art to print

Welcome to Day 22 of 25 Days of Vintage Hallowe’en Art!

Up today is another image from one of my 1920′s Dennison Bogie Books – THE Halloween party planning magazine of days gone by. This is such an awesome, iconic, classic witch illustration – so useful in so many ways! I can picture her printed out and wrapped around a votive candle to let her awesome Halloween colors glow!

Awesome Vintage Witch Halloween Art - Click for free printable graphic

Welcome to Day 21 of 25 Days of Vintage Hallowe’en Art!

Today’s gorgeous illustration comes from a 1920′s special edition issue of Women’s Weekly magazine, which is actually more like a soft cover book filled with party and entertaining ideas for year-round celebrations. It is filled with so much info – from etiquette and place settings, to recipes, to table linen embroidery patterns. And then the last few pages are stuffed with a bunch of weird trivia facts, like they ran out of ideas and needed some filler content. But this illustration is one of the main reasons I bought the magazine, because I love the idea of an old-fashioned masquerade party in the roaring twenties. Seriously, if I could time travel, I’d totally go to one of those!!

Beautiful 1920's Vintage Halloween Costume Illustrations - Click for large instant art printable

Welcome to Day 20 of 25 Days of Vintage Hallowe’en Art!

Bugs are SO NOT MY THING. I can’t stand them. I’ve done a good job of calming down my panic-attack level of arachnophobia… but only a little bit. I honestly didn’t even like having to scan and look at these images in order to post them to the blog today! But a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do in order to continue this series in true creepy Halloween fashion. But just know that today I totally took one for the team!

Disgusting Cockroaches Halloween Clip Art - Click for full size printable artwork

Creepy Crawly Gross Tarantula Halloween Clip Art - Click for full size printable artwork

Welcome to Day 19 of 25 Days of Vintage Hallowe’en Art!

Today’s image comes from that vintage book of ghost stories I’ve mentioned previously in this series. It has been the source of some of my creepiest images I’ve shared! This is the only graveyard image I have in my collection, by the way, which is somewhat unfortunate because graveyards FREAK me out. Halloween is all about getting freaked out!! If I had a way to blow up this image to a super large size (I don’t), I would totally take this and make it into a full size window shade. Perhaps one of you is artistically talented and ambitious enough to pull this off?

Spooky Ghost in a Graveyard Halloween Clip Art - Click for larger print image

Welcome to Day 18 of 25 Days of Vintage Hallowe’en Art!

Here’s the last of my vintage pumpkin stencils – at least for this year! Yesterday I promised some easier stencils to carve – and this is definitely the easiest one of the lot. It is based off of an illustration from a rare 1920′s Halloween party invitation I found in one of my vintage Dennison Halloween magazines from 1929. Three cats, all in a row silhouetted in front of the full moon. With only four pieced to cut out, this template should take you less than an hour to carve!

Easy Halloween Cats Pumpkin Pattern - Click to print larger stencil

Welcome to Day 17 of 25 Days of Vintage Hallowe’en Art!

It is Friday, and going into the weekend I’ll be posting the last of my vintage pumpkin stencils. This way you’ll have plenty of time to carve pumpkins to your heart’s content! Today’s pattern is based on a fairly common and well-loved die cut paper decoration made by the Beistle company. In fact, they were founded in 1900 and are still around today – they are even still selling this exact jack o’ lantern paper decoration! I’m fairly certain that this particular corn-cob smoking pumpkin first appeared in their collection in the 1960′s. They are very easy to find if you are a Halloween collector, but since they are very hard to date, you could be buying one that is 60 years old or printed this year.

Vintage Beistle Halloween Die Cut Paper Decorations

Today’s and tomorrow’s stencils are going to be a lot simpler and easier than the previous stencils in this series. Not everyone has the patience to carve elaborate pumpkins, I know! Here’s the pumpkin face carving pattern – isn’t he cute??

Vintage Pumpkin Face Carving Pattern - Click for larger printable stencil

Welcome to Day 16 of 25 Days of Vintage Hallowe’en Art!

Today’s images come from another 1950′s children’s activity magazine. These two adorable paper toys were intended to be traced and then cut out of construction paper and made into table place cards. But since these are now printable images that you could use over and over again, you obviously can use them as place cards as is. My kids would also use them as decorations, paper dolls, or you could cut off the bottom flap and use them for any Halloween craft project.

Vintage Cute Halloween Witch Paper Cut Out - Click for full page printable paper toy

Vintage Halloween Black Cat Paper Cut Out - Click for full page printable paper toy