Halloween Crafts

Making your own crafts for Halloween means making a whole lot of fun, and each finished craft project is a unique one that only you could have made.  House decorations are terrific ways to accommodate guests, whether at a party or tick or treaters.  They are usually super-easy to make and quite inexpensive.  We have some tips below and hopefully they will help you to realize a few crafts of your own.

• Design a pumpkin or ghost-like face on empty one-gallon milk jugs then paint on the face.  After you’ve cut out a back hole, light the jugs with candles or bulbs.  Those battery operated candles are the best, and safest.
• Get a few of those twig wreaths from the craft store and seasonal decorative items and flowers for them.  You can make a Fall one first for Halloween, then one for Winter, Spring and Summer.
• Spiders!  These can be made from all sorts of found and purchased objects.  One of the easiest is to get 8 of those chenille stems, a couple of googly eyes, a small styrofoam ball, and a suction cup.  Paint the ball with appropriate paint, stick the stems in like legs, glue on the eyes and suction cup, and stick it on your windows.
• Make a crowd of ghosts for the front lawn — Set up a few tomato cages and use twigs for arms.  Weave a strand of lights through the cage and test to see if they light up.  Cover with sheet or muslin and always use tiny lights for safety.
• Eyes on the passersby.  Use ping pong balls and tea lights which are battery powered.  Paint the ping pong ball to look like an eyeball then cut a small hole in the bottom and stick it on to the tea light.  Line up in your front window on a ledge.
• Purchase one or more of those white translucent paper globe lights.  Decorate with scrapbooking or construction paper and then plug it in.  This is one lit owl!
• Paint acorns orange then draw faces on them with a permanent marker.  Arrange the tiny “pumpkins” how you like.  This is a good one for kids as the pumpkins like tiny hands to make them!
• Pumpkins can be changed into baseball players.  Put a real hat on them, paint some eyes and part of a face, then blow up a small pink balloon, tie it off, then make a small hole and poke it into the pumpkin where the mouth would be.
• Your own batmobile, or other mobile.  Start with a wire hanger then cut out bat shapes and hang them from the hangar with twine or fishing line.  Make a hangar go through another at right angles and you’ll have more hanging points.  Use pumpkins instead, or ghosts.
• Paint small pumpkins black, put on fierce eyes, cut out wings from craft foam, and you’ll have some unique bat-pumpkins.  If you paint the eyes differently they will have different expressions.
• An assortment of creepy creatures.  Use craft foam and cut out bats and spiders and black cats.  You can out these on a mirror or the inside of your windows.
• Bats that are fuzzy.  Cut a little puff off of a feather boa, attach craft foam wings and eyes, and you’ll have a whole bunch of bat kitties.
• Cut a band of paper and measure it to fit around a votive candle holder.  Cut eyes out of the paper in pairs and when a candle is lit, the eyes will dance.
• If you are camping around Halloween, then make yourself a nice sign out of cardboard like :  The Smith’s Campsite.  Decorate with leaves and hang on the nearest to the campsite post.
• Permanent pumpkins can be made by using clay pots, upside down, and decorate with yellow Jack O’Lantern faces and a piece of foam or branch for the stem.
• If you have a pair of windows in your house, then decorate each half from the inside to look like a Jack O’Lantern from the outside.
• Make a big spider for your window by using a half of a large styrofoam egg, then sticking bendable foam legs into the side.  Don’t forget there are 8!
• Use battery powered tea lights in small brown paper bags and line your walkway with them.