Most people think you go out and buy your Halloween decorations and lets be straight, buying them can be very expensive at times. Lets be honest too, most of us are on a budget and we can't afford all of those decorations. What most people don't know is that you can make most of your Halloween (practically any holiday decoration) from things around your house and it will cost you next to nothing. I should know because I have made several in the past and each year, I keep thinking up more and more decorations.
So I've surfed the web to find web sites that show case decorations made from things around the house. I also put some store bought decoration that you an actually make at home without paying a whole of money for it. Like I said before, most decorations can be made without the cost of paying an arm and a leg....
In this picture, you can actually make this one with any lampshade you have. All you need is some wire, bat cut outs from cereal boxes and black masking tape. You tape the cut outs onto the wire and you use the black masking tape to tape on the wires to the bottom of the lampshade and there you have it. A store bought Halloween lampshade from a Pier One store.
You can always buy a pumpkin to make a Jack 'O' Lantern but then you have a problem. buy one and make it too soon, it ends up rotting and causing a bug problem, you spray it with a chemical like hairspray to make its decay slow. Do this and it could cause a fire hazard. So therefore you can buy one of those foam pumpkins that you an hollow out and turn into a Jack'O'Lantern or purchase one that has already been made. Yet again, you can pay anywhere from $5.00 to $10.00 for one. If you don't want to go out and pay that much for one, then you can make yourself one. All you have to do is get you a bag of balloons, assorted, and they don't cost that much for a bag and get orange paint. Like one to two dollars a bag and like I said they are assorted so you can make them any size. For the bottle of paint, it's like two or three dollars for a bottle. Then find some old newspapers, and glue mixed with a little water. tear the newspaper into strips and blow up the balloon. Dip the strips of newspaper into the glue/water mixture and stick them one the balloon. Once dry, paint them orange and cut out the faces you desire. Make sure you don't set them out to where they can get damp, otherwise they may fall apart.
You've seen those light up spooky lights that you hang on the walls of your home or on the windows. they cost anywhere from $10.00 to $20.00, depending on which store you buy them from. Well here's a cheaper version of those spooky lights. Granted, you probably won't be able to to hang them on you wall or put them on your window. You can, however, place them anywhere on property where they are easily concealed but yet at the same time where they can be seen. What you do is take left over paper towel rolls cut them in two and cut out simple spooky shapes for the eyes. Then you stick little glow sticks in side, and they last for up two eight hrs. or so. You can buys these glow sticks anywhere and they are inexpensive too, like $2.00 to $3.00 per stick or you can go to your nearest dollar tree store and buy them for $1.00 a piece. If you are on a budget, then buy and create these about a day before Halloween for your trick or treators.
These are just a few ideas for Halloween decorations that you can create next to nothing from items around your house for next to nothing. If these ideas sparked your interest then check out these websites below for more decoration ideas:
Happy Halloween, everyone...
What wonderful ideas. I love the lampshade. I wonder if you could cut out bat shapes from black construction pager. That might work too.
ReplyDeleteHere's a craft we made in Cub Scouts:
Take an empty plastic jug, cut out a jack-o-lantern or ghost face on the side, cut a hole in the bottom large enough to fit a string of white Christmas-tree lights. If you want, you can paint the jug a spooky color. Place the lights inside the jug and plug it in. Viola! You now have a scary ghost.
Tricia,
DeleteYou are absolutely right. You can use black construction paper for the bat cut outs. Plus I love the jack'o'lantern or ghost from milk jugs. when i was a kid, one of my teachers gave her students a craft to do with our parents. It's simular to yours but we made a whole skeleton out of them and if I remember correctly it took about 8 jugs to make it and it lasted for years (about ten to be exact).