Spooky Decorations

Use odd & ends from around your house to make cute Halloween crafts

What you’ll need:

Ghosts -

  • fabric scraps

  • Newspaper or other filling for the head portion

  • Yarn or string

  • Scissors

Bats -

  • Egg Carton

  • Scissors

  • Paint and paint brush

  • Yarn or string

Spiderweb Frames -

  • Empty frame or stretcher bars. Branches or sticks tied together would be very cool too.

  • Yarn

  • Staple gun and staples

  • Scissors

  • optional: spider friend

Ghosts!

  • Layout your fabric and cut a rough square, it can be any size and doesn’t need to be perfect.

  • Crumple a piece of newspaper into a ball the size you’d like your ghost’s head to be.

  • Cut a piece of yarn or string, I find that 12 inches gives me enough to wrap around your ghost’s neck a few times.

  • Drape your fabric square over your ball of newspaper, gather the fabric under the ball to create a neck. Wrap your length of yarn around the neck a few times and tie a knot. You can add a bow, or bowtie, or necklace to your ghost too if your feeling extra fancy.

  • To suspend your ghost in the astral plane (to hang you ghost up), snip two small holes on the top of your ghost’s head and run a long length of yarn through the two holes. You can also use a needle and thread for this if you have it laying around. Tie off the yarn and hang your ghost in the window for all to admire!

  • Repeat as many times as you please.

Bats!

  • Remove the lid from an egg carton and cut up the egg holding section of the carton, dividing it into pieces of three egg holding portions each. Flip them upside down, the middle of the three is now the bat body and the other parts are the wings!

  • If you choose to style your bat a bit, you can cut wing shapes into the outer parts of the three sections and fangs to the body.

  • Paint the bat! I used black to keep it traditional but your bat can be whatever you want. I also painted in little white dots for eye on mine, you can try adding googley eyes to be silly, add blood on the fangs, do whatever makes you happy!

  • After the paint has dried, poke a small hole in the top of the bats head.

  • Cut a piece of yarn the length you want your bat to hang.

  • Tie one end of the yarn around a piece of scrap carton leftover from cutting out your bat. This acts as a stopper to hold the string in place.

  • From the inside of the bat head, thread the loose end of the yarn through the hole you poked.

  • Fly your bat friend around the house until you find a spot for it live.

Framed Spiderwebs!

  • Lay your frame face down on a sturdy surface.

  • Using a staple gun secure lengths of yarn working around your frame to create the structure for your web. I prefer to run at least four pieces of yarn and have them cross to the opposite side of the frame at a diagonal, creating eight “pie-slice” sections in the frame. I don’t precut the yarn but instead pull the yarn from the ball and trim the yarn after I’ve stapled it to the frame. You can also tie the yarn around the frame or use glue, I prefer staples as if keeps it looking a little cleaner.

  • DO NOT CUT the last length of yarn off at the frame after you secure it! I like to start my web lines from the last secured point rather than starting a new one. You can either keep the yarn attached to its bundle or cut more manageable long lengths and tie on more pieces as you need, it just depends on what kind of look you’re going for. I like a rustic/ crafty look so I’m ok with tying on more pieces as I go.

  • Working in a spiral from the outside toward the center, tie your long yarn in a single knot around the structure lines every time you cross one. I like the single knot because you can then slide the knot up or down on the structure line depending on how much tension or slack you want your web to have. You can make your web lines as close together or as spaced out as you want. Keep tying knots around toward the center until it looks good to you.

  • If your web looks lonely, make a little spider friend out of some scrap paper.

  • You can hang your new framed web on the wall or tie yarn around the corners and hang them in the windows with your other spooky decorations for all the world to see!

I’d love to see what you make, if you share your creations on instagram tag me!