With Halloween just around the corner my mind has been on creating fun and spooky crafts. You’ll love these upcycled Halloween craft ideas.
My daughter seems to have her mind set on creating a spooky room for Halloween, so we’ve been coming up with fun and easy ways to decorate her room (and by easy, I mean easy for me to clean up!).
Last week we made a haunted tower scene using toilet rolls and a paper plate. I didn’t want to spend a ridiculous amount of money on Halloween items so we decided to see what else we could make with the items we had lying around the house.
After some hunting around, we decided our Halloween craft would be a recycled tin ghost and a egg carton bat. Both of these are super-easy and quick to make for kids of all ages. You can keep them simple, or really go to town with the decorations. And it’s great to know you’re cutting down on the waste by reusing something from around the home.
Just a small note of caution for small hands, you want to make sure you use a tin opener that doesn’t leave sharp edges, as your kids will be holding the cans while painting them. The cans we used were the ones that have the self-opening tab which leaves a nice blunt top.
Halloween craft – upcycled tin ghosts and egg carton bat
Upcycled tin ghosts
You will need
A clean tin
A plastic bag
White paint (we used a test pot of Resene Alabaster)
A black permanent marker
Googly eyes
PVA Glue
A nail and a hammer
A paint brush
String
Scissors
What to do
1. First clean and dry out your tins.
2. Using a nail and hammer pierce a whole in the top of the tin.
3.Paint your tin using Resene Alabaster. If your want it to be bright white give it two good coats.
4. While the paint is drying, grab your plastic bag and cut into long strips, leaving a small strip intact at the top like the image below shows (you will need to help little ones with this part).
5. Once the paint it completely dry (you can use a hairdryer to speed it up) use a permeant marker to draw on the black for the background of the eyes and a mouth. Then stick on the googly eyes.
7. Turn your tin upside down and place a ring of PVA glue around the inside of your tin.
8. Stick the top of your plastic bag that you didn’t cut right through to the inside of your tin.
8. Finally thread the string through the hole and tie a knot at the bottom of the string.
Now all you need to do is hang up your ghost, making ‘oooooo’ sounds, and scare your friends and family silly!
Upcycled egg carton bat
What you need
An egg carton (half dozen egg cartons work really well for this)
Scissors
Black paint (we used test pots in Resene Pitch Black)
Glitter (optional)
Googly eyes
White pen (optional)
Nail
String
What to do
1. Cut your egg carton in half longways so you have three egg carton pieces joined together.
2. Using a nail pierce a hole into the middle of the three egg cups.
3. Paint your egg carton all over in Resene Pitch Black, give it two really good coats for a deep colour.
4. If you are using glitter, while the black paint is still wet sprinkle on some glitter.
5. Once your bat is dry, glue on your eyes and draw a little mouth with a white gel pen. If you don’t have a gel pen you can use white paint and a fine tip brush to paint on a mouth.
6. Lastly, thread some string through the hole and tie a knot in the bottom to hang up your bat.
If you liked these Halloween ideas check out some of our other Halloween craft posts using toilet paper rolls. Or check out our School Age: Creative arts and crafts section for hundreds more projects.
