We love Halloween! It’s definitely one of the favorite holidays for kids. In addition to the costumes and trick or treating, decorating the house is, of course, a huge part of Halloween. These two craft projects below are easy and fun to do with kids and can quickly enhance the spooky atmosphere in your home.
How to Make Mason Jar Mummies for Halloween
These DIY mason jar mummies are a great craft activity for little kids because it’s super easy and you don’t need many materials. We love these as lanterns to make the house both cozy and spooky at night. But you can also use them as jars for Halloween candy or just as decoration.
What you need:
- Clear glass jars (e.g., Mason jars)
- First aid paper tape (you can buy that at any drug store)
- Googly eyes
- Glue
- Tea lights (real or battery-powered)
Ready to make your mason jar mummy? Here are the steps:
- Grab your first aid paper tape and wrap it around the jar. We love this tape because it’s a bit see-through (great for lanterns) and it’s already sticky, so no glue needed here. And you can just rip it with your hands. For a toddler it’s probably easier if you rip some tape into smaller pieces and then they stick it on the jar rather than wrapping it around. The great news is mummy’s look messy, so overlapping tape and tape in any direction is totally fine.
- Now it’s time to add a pair of googly eyes (if you don’t have any, you can also make your own eyes out of black and white paper). Use craft glue to attach the googly eyes on the top part of the jar’s body. Wait for the glue to dry.
- Now just add tealights. A lot of parents prefer battery-powered LED tealights because they are obviously the safer choice.
All done! We highly recommend that you make a few of these mummies so they don’t get lonely. Again, you can also use them as jars for Halloween parties to fill them with candy, cutlery, etc., so the more the merrier (or spookier).
How to Make Halloween Window Silhouettes
Window decorations are the perfect way to get into the Halloween spirit. This craft doesn’t require many supplies and is a fun DIY activity for the entire family. These silhouettes look great from inside and outside. If you want, you can add colorful LED projector lights inside to show off these silhouettes.
What you need:
- Black poster board (22 x 28 inches)
- Pencil
- Scissors (both regular and nail scissors for tight spots)
- Blu tac in black color (so you won’t see the tac on the black cardboard) or double-sided tape
Ready to make your Halloween silhouette? Here are the steps:
- Decide on what Halloween shapes you want to create (e.g., hands, ghosts, creepy cats, birds or bats). You can draw your own shapes, or a much easier solution is to look online to get inspired and find templates. For example, if you want to make ghosts, just search for “free ghost templates”, “ghost faces”, or “ghost clipart” and you will find plenty of shapes. If you do this project with little kids, just pick a very simple shape for them. There are plenty to choose from.
- Print out the shapes you want to create.
- Using the shapes you found as a guide, now draw the outline with a pencil onto black poster board. Most templates you print out will be too small for a window silhouette. Hence, you will need to draw the outline bigger rather than simply tracing it. Remember you can’t go wrong with Halloween characters, so the drawing doesn’t have to be perfect. If you create a few shapes, they will look great together, no matter what.
- Now cut out the shapes from the poster board
- Stick them on your window with “black” blu tac or double-sided tape
All done! For special effect you can add a colorful LED projector light from inside to illuminate the window.
