Start saving up those jars and cans. Don’t even think of tossing those old sheets or leftover craft supplies. Get ready to repurpose and recycle these items and more into easy to-create Halloween decorations that are both spooky and cheap!
Milk Jug Lanterns
The carved pumpkins are the must-have glow, but you can add a few ghosts to your yard too by using milk jugs painted with a spooky ghost face. Line these up in a row above white Christmas lights and you have a spooky recycling project.
Kleenex ghosts
AAAaaaahhh Boo! Start with a lollipop (blow pops and tootsie pops work great), then cover with a kleenex and cinch just under the lollipop top with some string. Use a sharpie to draw your ghost’s face and check out what a spooky treat you have created. These can be given out as is, or try using atop cupcakes, arranging in flower pots, or sticking into pumpkins.
Tin Can Candles & Craft
Before you toss another soup can into the trash, consider adding a coat of black or orange paint and transforming that tin can into a candle, vase, planter, etc. There are so many possibilities! Fill a few with dirt and Kleenex ghosts, for example. Use an ice pick and hammer to punch holes in the shape of words like “Boo,” “Trick or Treat” or “Eek!” and then place a lit candle inside to watch your letters light up.
Spooky Hand Ice Cube
Create the punch that will have everyone at the party talking when you freeze water in plastic gloves. Add a little green food coloring and now your ice cube hand is that much creepier!
Toilet Paper Pumpkins
Roll your toilet paper rolls in orange tissue paper. Add a little green or brown tissue paper to stick out of the top of the roll and then decorate your pumpkin toilet paper roll’s face. Cheap, easy, and after the holiday you can replenish your toilet paper stash.
Footprint Ghosts
This is the perfect way to get your little goblins involved in Halloween decorating! Dip your kid’s feet in white finger paints and apply the footprints to black paper. Once dry, add the ghost’s eyes and mouth to the heel of the footprint.
DIY Graveyard
Before you spend money on those tombstone decorations at the store, consider purchasing a few lawn stakes instead and attaching them to the back of your own cardboard tombstone cutouts. Cover your cutouts in grey paint and add some marker text like RIP then stake your tombstones into the yard. Using real wood for this graveyard project will make for sturdier tombstones that you may even be able to use next year, but just keep in mind that it adds to the cost, too.
Haunted Trees
Drap those old sheets among the branches of your front yard tree to spook your trick-or-treaters. A pillow or another sheet can be stuffed in the center of your ghost sheet and cinched closed underneath to give the ghost a head and will help to give these haunts some added shape as they float among the treetops.
