Sisters Share It All: Halloween DIY

Halloween is giving me a mega-excuse to do silly little crafts.

This little bat chandelier I whipped together in one evening while we watched an episode of something very cerebral and deep (okay, it might have been White Collar), and cost me a whopping $2 (fifty cents for a piece of black poster board and $1.50 for some black glitter).

And I have gotten so many compliments on this, it’s kind of ridiculous (it’s cooler looking than the photos might lead you to believe. Also it makes fantastic shadows on the wall).

I printed out this bat silhouette in two sizes, traced eight of each on my black posterboard and cut them out.

Then I coated the bottom edges of about half of them with rubber cement, poured black glitter on them, tapped them off and voila! Bats done.

I strung them together with black thread (I used two pieces of thread for each set of bats, taping it on the tips of each wing so they would hang straight) and varying how far apart they were and where the larger bats hung. Some strands had three or four bats, while some had only one or two.

 

I tied the strings to a tack and pushed them straight into the ceiling.

And then, because I couldn’t leave well-enough alone, I made a banner. Because I kind of love banners. There was the the Valentine’s Day banner from recycled Christmas cards, and the umbrella banner, and the polka-dot banner, and the confetti banner, and now there is this Halloween banner.

This is about the easiest thing you can make (which, since I generally just chuck my banners after the holiday or event is over, is what I like).

Paper Coterie has free bingo cards for Halloween (you just download the files here and print them off). There are 24 different images and each of them is about 1.5 inches square (although you could enlarge them if you wish).

I picked my favorite sixteen, cut them out, colored a few of them in with markers (you know, my high-quality Crayola washable markers, so it’s not likely yours will look quite as professional as mine), and then glued them on to yellow, orange, and brown construction paper.

A quick tape job to some brown twine and I made Bart hang it up on the wall. Very festive and it cost me a total of $0 because I had everything just laying around.

I also love how many different ways you could do this, like printing them on colored paper instead of white, or dipping the edges in glitter or using patterned paper instead of solid for the background or gluing circles of tissue paper behind the squares or. . .or. . .okay, I better stop or Bart will wonder why exactly we needed seven very similar Halloween banners for our two bedroom place.

And I will have no good answer at all.

 

And if YOU’D like to share your own favorite Halloween project, whether it’s food, decorations, costumes, or something else, we’d love to hear about it! Share your post below:

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