Crafting Secrets

A fun activity during Halloween is to decorate your home with hand made art and craft decorations. With a little imagination, one can make wonderful decorations to beautify the house and give it that festive look during Halloween. It is not necessary to be an expert at craft making, but a little imagination and ingenuity will go a long way to succeed in this project. A quick search on the Internet for ideas on homemade decorations will speed up your imaginative powers. You can come up with some creepy looking decorations by making use of simple household items.

One way to decorate your driveway or walkway is to place pumpkin or skeleton luminaries. All you need is brown paper lunch bags, orange or red spray paint, sand, and candles. Take the brown paper bag and cut out a skeleton face or a pumpkin face. You can spray-paint the bags either orange or black or use the colors for alternately placed bags. Weigh down the bags with sand and place small tea candles or votive candles inside glass votive cups in the bags. You can place these creepy luminaries all along the walkway up to the front porch for a spooky effect. It is a great way to lead the trick-or-treaters towards the treats awaiting them.

A glass luminary can be made by using simple glass canning jars. Cut out a skeleton face, a ghost face or a pumpkin face on a sheet of paper. Tape the paper to the front of the jar and spray paint with either black or orange color. Place a candle inside the jar and light it up to give an eerie look to the house!

Another simple Halloween decoration can be made with the help of orange construction paper. Cut out several pumpkin faces and tape these to the windowpane. You can light up the window by just placing a table lamp on the inside. This will throw up spooky shadows to greet your visitors.

Decorative candles are another easy Halloween art d

When it comes to Halloween costumes, we always decided to make our own because we felt it was foolish to spend $35 and up, for a costume that our child was only going to wear one time. Over the years, my sister-in-law and I have made numerous costumes for our children and I thought I would share a few simple ideas with you.

If you are concerned about safety, I recommend purchasing some reflective material patches at your local fabric and crafts store, and sew or glue them onto your child’s costume. This safety measure will help car drivers to see them at night as they are crossing the street. I always recommend that a responsible adult accompany children on Trick or Treat night.

Here are the Halloween costume ideas we came up with over the years.

Lady Bug – You will need: red leotard, red tights, 4 sheets of black felt and fabric glue. Cut out some circles and ovals from the felt and glue onto the red leotard so that it looks like lady bug spots. To make antennae, purchase a black headband, 2 round 3″ diameter Styrofoam balls, 2 pencils, black acrylic paint and gorilla glue. Paint the Styrofoam balls and pencils black and let dry. Glue pencils to the center of the Styrofoam balls, let dry and then glue the pencils to the top of the head band.

Note: You could use the same concept above and do a bumble bee and substitute the red clothing items with yellow clothing items and make black felt bee-style stripes.

Construction Worker – You will need: denim blue jeans, white T-shirt, flannel shirt and a yellow plastic hard hat found at a discount toy store. You can borrow a man’s tool belt or purchase a canvas-style apron with pockets at a local craft store for a few dollars. If desired, visit your local dollar discount store and purchase a plastic tool set to stick into the pockets of the tool belt.

Golfer – You will need: khaki colored pants, polo-style shirt and a plaid golfers cap. You can purchase plastic golf clubs and balls at your local dollar discount store. We made our own golf bag by emptying out a large round cardboard tube and painting it with acrylic paints. Punch a hole in each side of the tube and attach twine for a carrying strap. You can fit 3-4 plastic golf clubs into the holder and have your child carry it over their shoulder.

Nurse – You will need: white skirt, shirt, tights and shoes which your child most likely already has in her closet. To add to that, purchase a child’s size nurses cap at a costume store along with a plastic doctor’s kit at your local dollar discount store. We also accented the white shirt with a name badge and a red felt first-aid cross that we hand drew and safety pinned to the shirt.

Mummy – You will need: white clothing, white ski mask, white sneakers, several rolls of white first aid bandages and numerous safety pins. We cut the bandages into 12-24″ lengths and safety pinned them around the legs, arms and abdomen of the outfit. We chose to use fabric glue to attach them to the white ski mask. If you are making this costume for a small child, then I recommend using non-toxic fabric glue instead of the safety pins.

Black Spider – You will need: black jeans, black sweatshirt, 2 pairs of black little girls tights, 1 bag of fiberfill stuffing, black thread. You need to cut the panty portion off of the tights and just use the legs. Stuff each leg firmly with fiberfill and then sew the end shut with thread. Do this for a total of 4 spider legs. You will want to hand sew (or machine sew) the stuffed legs onto the sides of the black sweatshirt about 4-5″ below the sweatshirt arm. If desired, you can paint the child’s face black or lime green with face paints.

Crayon – You will need: your choice of colored clothing, we selected orange to fit with the Halloween theme, along with several sheets of black felt, fabric glue and a black fabric paint. Grab one of your child’s crayons and use it as an example on how you should cut out designs from your black felt. Attach those designs onto the clothing items so that it resembles a crayon. You can use the black fabric paint to paint on the crayon-makers name on the front of the shirt. To further fit with our theme, we machine sewn a triangular hat out of matching orange felt, so that ‘our’ little crayon had a pointy crayon top.

All kids love Halloween, but many parents don’t because of worries surrounding trick-or-treating.

You don’t want your children to be out on the street on their own; you’re not keen on the quality of the treats they bring home; and you may even be worried that someone could put something in a treat bag that would be unsafe. …but all your little munchkins want to do is get out there and have some fun! What can you do?

Well, there are a whole range of options available, and 5 of the easiest are right here for you:

1. Organise a trick or treat tour.

The TOUR element is the important bit. Choose a route with a number of pre-arranged stops, and agree with the householders at those stops what to give as treats and how much. It’s a good idea if you can do this with other parents in the area. Make sure that the kids know that there is a plan and they have to stick to it – or else forfeit their treats! Make sure that there is a chaperone available to accompany the kids on their rounds too.

2. Tell ghost stories around the fire.

If you don’t live in town or near other families with kids to help you with a tour, have some old-fashioned spooky fun at home. Have an open fire or gather a few candles on the table and take it in turns to tell gruesome ghost-stories. After each story toast a few marshmallows on skewers. The person voted spookiest story-teller wins a prize.

3. Have a competition to keep the gang busy.

Got a few kids you can pitch against each other and keep them busy? Great! Have a competition to make the best Halloween creature. A ghost-making competition is a good one, as all you need are a few old sheets (from a charity shop if you don’t have any) and the colouring and craft supplies you probably already have at home. Think of a prize to give to the winner – and to forestall arguments, make it something that is big enough to share with all the others. The great thing about this sort of competition is that it works for any number of kids from 2 upwards.

4. Host a Halloween party.

We don’t often see old fashioned Halloween parties nowadays and more’s the pity. Some traditional tricks and games will keep kids (and grown-ups!) happy all evening and won’t break the bank either. Think: apple bobbing; find the eyeballs (pickled onions in a big pan of water and tea-leaves – which feels disgusting!); and the finger in the matchbox. Ask your own parents and grandparents for more ideas – they will remember doing all of these things as children.

5. Find alternative activities in your area.

If you want a quiet life, have a look in your local area for organised activities that you can take your children along to. Organised activities can be more expensive than doing it at home, but you don’t have to worry about arranging it yourself. Schools and youth clubs may be organising parties, and visitor attractions may be doing something special for Halloween this year. Check online listing sites and local newspapers and magazines for details.

A fun activity during Halloween is to decorate your home with hand made art and craft decorations. With a little imagination, one can make wonderful decorations to beautify the house and give it that festive look during Halloween. It is not necessary to be an expert at craft making, but a little imagination and ingenuity will go a long way to succeed in this project. A quick search on the Internet for ideas on homemade decorations will speed up your imaginative powers. You can come up with some creepy looking decorations by making use of simple household items. Most often, people like to transform their homes into haunted houses.

The yard is the best place to start with Halloween decorations. You can turn it into a creepy cemetery. You can give it a ghoulish appearance by putting ‘tombstones’ all around it. These can be simple plywood cut out into half- spheres. Attach some nails to the bottom, or push them down into the ground so that they stand up. You can paint them black and put some scary writings on them. The lighting in the yard can also be adjusted to throw eerie shadows over the yard. A few ‘ghosts’ made up of white sheets tied on to bushes will do the trick. Balloon Ghosts in white with attached bells can be left to float in the breeze. Their haunting chimes may scare even the strongest hearted person!

Halloween Crafts for the indoors can be made easily. One way to get a spooky effect in the house is to drape a fine white cloth, artistically painted with a ghost face, on the windowpane. Bats, artificial cobwebs and witch cutouts can be put up on the walls or hung from the ceiling to complete the creepy effect.

Many of these crafts can be made by kids too. However, if there is a need to use power tools for creating them, it is best left to the adults to do the job. Children can be involved to do simple things like painting or gluing on glitter, beads and sequins. This can be a fun activity done together to create something unique.

Your creativity is limited only to your imagination. Use your imagination and creativity while putting together Halloween crafts. As adults, your creations will be much neater since you are now agile while using your hands. Let the kids participate as well. There is nothing better than having a family activity to bring everyone closer! Have fun and enjoy your time with the family during Halloween.

The first and foremost task involved in preparing for Halloween is to look out for places on where you can get yourself the costume you have been wanting to wear and show off amongst your friends. Halloween is all about wearing the dress you never even imagine of wearing on any other day of the year. Of course you would know that or else you would not be reading this article. The best option to look for ideas, on where to buy costumes or how to prepare one, is the Internet. Like all other information, tons of ideas for Halloween can be found on the Internet. Even though this article does not contain all the ideas for a complete Halloween, it would definitely help you start your preparation.

Halloween is just about creating a theme and strictly abiding to the theme. You can also have a normal party with people coming in different costumes but it would be real fun if you set aside a theme for Halloween. Halloween is about having fun decorations making it scary and eerie.

Let us take some time in going through a few ideas that can make you Halloween interesting.

Idea #1 – Do you have a bush in front of your house? Or can you create one just for the occasion? If yes, you are about to be the point of attraction in your neighborhood. Make a note of the items required for this idea. You need a white sheet as per the size of the bush, a newspaper, permanent black magic marker or fabric paint and cloth pins. The idea is to make a ghost like figure by painting a ghost on the white paper, folding the white sheet, balancing the sheet with the newspaper and securing the figure with the help of clothespins. Sounds really simple but it is definitely going to scare the passerby.

Idea #2 – The other idea for Halloween is to make your house look very festive and very scary, both the inside and the outside. I will show you how to get a scary path way. You will need lots of brown lunch bags, orange paint, sand and tea light or votive candle. Paint the bags orange in color and cut it out to make a scary face of a pumpkin. Fill half of the pumpkin face with sand and put a candle in it and light it. Make lots of these along the pathway and it would look really scary.

Idea #3 – You will require orange construction paper, white construction paper, pencil, scissors, string, tape, glue and staples. Draw a picture of a ghost on the white chart paper and pumpkin faces on the orange one. Be sure to make it a free hand draw to get originality. Also leave some space on top of the chart so that you can hang it to make a garland of ghosts and pumpkin faces. Fold over the space and place the string by the fold. Secure the created articles using staples, glue and tape. The pumpkin garland would look good with a green string and the ghosts with a black string to have a good contrast. Hang them all round your house and start the party.

Apart from these ideas, tons of examples and ideas can be found on the World Wide Web, but the best information center is your brain. As said creativity is the master of all arts.

If you teach students, like me, then you will forever be on the look out for easy classroom crafts that your students can make when Halloween nears. The best way to keep children occupied is by involving them in an activity in which they get to make something on their own and the most opportune season would be Halloween. This is a great time to get your class to make decorations that can make the classroom look festive and vibrant. There are innumerable classroom crafts that you could try. Here are some crafts that your your students can make and which I have personally found to be a hit with the children.

One great classroom craft that you can make is the fun ghost. All you need to use is white construction paper and the feet of your students. Make the students remove their shoes and stand on the white construction paper. Trace the outside of each foot but leave out the toes. If possible, get the kids to work together at tracing each other’s foot. Then make the cut the footprints out. The ghost’s head will be the foot heel. They can use black construction paper or permanent marker to draw the ghost face. The remaining bits of white construction paper left from the foot tracing can be used as the arms. The students can glue the arms of the ghost. Punch a hole on top of the ghost’s head and pull a string through it so that the ghost can be hung from the ceiling, doors and other surfaces to make the room spooky.

In addition to ghosts, you can even have some bats flying around your room. This is another Halloween craft that has worked well with the students. First, take an egg carton. Ask the kids to cut out three successive cups from the carton using scissors. Make sure that the three cups remain attached. Cut out the back and front of the outer two cups to form the wings. Then paint the bat black using black paint. Once the paint has dried, the children can either draw the eyes using white paint or paste googly eyes for the bats. Then pull a string through a hole punched at the top of the central cup and tie it. Make sure the string does not pull at the hole. Hang the bats along with the ghosts and your classroom will be full of great Halloween crafts.

These are just a few of the various classroom crafts that you can try out. There are many other crafts that will thrill your students and drive them to accomplish more. A lot of students have told that even their parents were thrilled when they took their creations home. You will, of course, have to ask the students to bring their own supplies, as this is to be expected while planning a classroom craft project. Let your kids exercise their imagination and express their creativity any way they want.