Scary ghostly tales of haunted houses or history, creepy creep horror movies, the ghoulishly ghoulie tales of zombies, witches casting spells, dark science experiments gone haywire...these are a few of my favorite things! Is it any wonder that Halloween is my favorite holiday? For me it's almost more fun to marvel at the homes decorated for the spooky holiday than at Christmas time! Unusual thing about that decorating bit is, as much as I love to decorate my home, my person, and see all the other homes done up, I don't do much to my own home in terms of HOLIDAY decor. Sad right? Makes ya feel all gloomy inside doesn't it? I do it for Christmas, and that's not even my favorite holiday! So I said, "Self, get it together..you can do a LITTLE something!" To my surprise, self listened! For better or worse, I share these ideas with you!
For simplicity sake I tend to use what I have around me to "make" decorations from. I don't particularly enjoy going to the stores and spending loads of money on the themed decorations, so I tend to create with paper and nature....like sticks or pine for Christmas, and gourds for Halloween or fall-times. This time around its painted pumpkins, paper bats and paper skeletons.
I found some free templates online for the skeleton and bats, and there's more than one painted pumpkin tutorial out there. You might be sayin, hey why painted pumpkins? And I'd say, well, you can do more with them, add google eyes, paint hipster patterns on them, use glitter, it's endless. If you're really up to it you can paint them, and carve them! But for me, that's too much this year. This year I used fun made up patterns and dots. Some tutorials of painted pumpkins say, if you use non toxic water based paints you can still use the pumpkin, which is what I'd like to do, so I purchased baking pumpkins, with the hopes I can make a pie or bread out of them. (That's a different post!
Halloween DIY Supplies
So a few things you will need are twine, glue sticks, tape or double sided tape, scissors, pencil, non toxic paints or non toxic paint pens, varying paint brushes and time, or a helper, adult size or pint size works here! Using my bat template, I printed out various sizes, cut around them and used those to trace out black bats onto a black poster board, then I cut around them accordingly. For the skeleton it was almost the same process, but I glued the skeleton to the black poster board and cut around it accordingly...on the skeleton I liked showing the pattern out line and a little black poster board around the edges for drama.
You of course might not prefer the rustic maker look, so feel free to cut down to the bone! After cutting and glueing and cutting (again) with the skeleton, I used a paper hole punch to punch holes in the bones to connect the bones, then I took the twine and ran them through the holes and stitched them bones together. (Pro tip, if you have metal brads you could use those to position the skeleton in different moves, which could be more entertaining for you or your little ones than the rustic look of twine, I used twine as this is what I had around.) Display these as you wish! The bats are going in my front window, so I will use the double sided tape on them, or you can cut string or fishing line, tape one end to center of the bat and tape the other end to the ceiling for a flying effect.
The pumpkins will last the whole month uncut so place indoor or outdoor. The skeleton has a special place and that's on the front door, our porch is covered so I think it will be ok, folks who live in a wetter climate may consider keeping it indoor until trick or treat day arrives so he stays so fresh and so clean. Do note, that all jewelry in photos is made or curated by Orange Blush, please refer to the jewelry page for new items. And as always, if you saw something I featured and didn't see it in store, just email! I am happy to help create custom orders, or release new items that have not been shown in store yet. Your wish is my command!
Check our post from last Halloween for a list of great horror movies! And def check the store for all things skully, full moonish and day of the dead! All orders this month will get a free iron on embroidered sugar skull patch, while supplies last!
