4 Easy Halloween Decorations You Can Make with Your Kids: Guest Blog

(I received a surprise in my email yesterday! A new guest blogger who is excited to share more Halloween crafts and decorations for you to make with your kids. And, it's just in time...Halloween is right around the corner. Thank you so much, Gunter Jameson, for your contribution to Mommy Rantings...)

Everyone keeps complaining about how Christmas is over-commercialized now, but what about Halloween? It used to be that every kid would make all their own costume, and families would make decorations out of construction paper for the big night. Now it seems that few children make their costumes anymore, and all the decorations are store-bought, denying kids the fun of making their own decorations with the help of their parents. Well, let’s get back to basics. If you’re hankering for the old days of making decorations by hand, here are a few easy ideas to get you started.

Egg Carton Bats

http://www.allfreecrafts.com/halloween/bat.shtml

All you need is an empty egg carton, some scissors, paint, and some string and you’re set.

1)      Cut the egg carton in to four pieces, each piece containing 3 egg container sections—kind of like three-humped camels.

2)      Now, cut the two side carton pieces so they are like arches branching off the middle piece—these are the wings.

3)      Now you can paint the pieces black, or decorate them however you want.

4)      Finally, for added effect, attach a string to the top of the middle section and hang it from a doorway or the ceiling.

http://www.allfreecrafts.com/halloween/bat.shtml

5)      For more information visit: http://www.allfreecrafts.com/halloween/bat.shtml

Hanging Ghosts

Ghost are a staple of Halloween, and you can easily make some out of tissues or—for more lasting ghosts—pieces of white scrap cloth.

1)      Take a handful of tissue and wad it up into a tight ball.

2)      Place the tight ball in the middle of another tissue, or piece of white scrap cloth, and gather up the remaining ends, bunching them together with the ball trapped inside.

3)      Tie a string around the cloth or tissue to trap the ball inside then flip it over. The ball is now the head of the ghost and the cloth is the ghost’s dangly waving body.

4)      You can draw a face on the head of the ghost and hang it from the ceiling (or a tree) for maximum effect, like this:

Milk Jug Creatures

If you’re looking for something that will really let your children’s creativity go wild, gather up some old milk jugs.

1)      Turn the milk jugs up side down, with the flat side pointing toward you.

2)      Wrap construction paper or tissue paper around the jug.

3)      Use markets, pencils, glitter, and other decorations to make the scariest face you can think of on the front.

4)      You can hang the heads from trees or doorways, or simply stack them next to the pumpkins on your front porch for an eerie effect.

Paper Spider Webs

This one is like a magic trick and almost too hard to try and explain in words, but here is a great video illustrating how to make simple, cool spider webs out of paper. Once you’ve got your spider webs, you and your kids can decorate them however you want and hang them around the house.

 

Gunter Jameson writes about several topics including travel, minimalism and online classes.