10 Spooky DIY Halloween Decorations To Try This Weekend
While it's fun tacking up spider webs and taping bats and witches to your front door, sometimes it can be a bit of a challenge not finding kitschy or cliche decorations.
Halloween is all about candy corn no one eats, cartoon specials running on loop weekday evenings, carving out jack-o-lanterns, drinking pumpkin spiced coffees, and decorating your house like you've grown a blonde bob and became Martha Stewart herself. While it's fun tacking up spider webs and taping bats and witches to your front door, sometimes it can be a bit of a challenge not finding kitschy or cliche decorations. I get it, the struggle is real. Which is why I have your back.
Below are 10 cute and modern DIY Halloween decorations to try this October — the amount of kitsch is up to you!
1. DIY Halloween Lights
Aren't a fan of bright orange lights strung up in your living room? Bring in the same Halloween-y mood by taking white fairy lights and popping black and white striped cupcake holders through every fifth bulb, a la Eztettem's DIY.
2. DIY Paper Spiderwebs
Add a touch of spookiness to your kitchen or living room with hanging paper spiderwebs. And the best part? All you need is paper, scissors, and glue! Even the uncraftiest of us can manage this.
3. Fanged Pumpkins
Break up the usual hoard of jack-o-lanterns on your mantel by giving a few of them big, cheeky greens. Sharp chompers included.
4. DIY Vertical Halloween Garland
Give the usual bats and skull shapes a twist by exaggerating their silhouettes into cute, cartoony proportions. After you've got a nice stack traced and cut, string them into vertical garlands and hang them up as a curtain over an open space, on top of a window, or against a blank wall. (PS: No worries if you're tragic with a pencil. Templates are included!)
5. Paper Bat Cut-Outs
A fun addition to the front of your house or, if you live an apartment, a living room door. Just cut out a few dozen 3D bats using Martha Stewart's templates and create a flock running from one side of the door to the other.
6. Gathered Circle Garland
Give your house a festive touch by sewing together a circle garland like this one from Art's Delight, but make it more goblins-and-ghouls approved by choosing black and orange craft paper. After you've sewn your circles onto their string, gather three or four garlands together and bunch them into a gathered fall.
7. Giant Kirigami Spider Webs
Not a fan of the spooky cotton spider webs that look like they should be covering graveyards and dusty attics? Go the paper route instead for a more clean look. Use Kraft paper or black or white poster paper, and the larger you go the bigger the statement it makes!
8. Tangled Spider Web Pumpkin
Not the craftiest of women? You don't need to be excluded from one of the most fun DIY seasons: Just grab a pumpkin, wrap some kitchen twine around and —voila! — you have yourself a spider web pumpkin. Now step back and admire your work all smug-like.
9. DIY Paper Straw Garland
If spending hours sewing paper circles together isn't your thing, make a paper straw garland instead. Buy black, white and orange themed ones, cut them into a bunting-like shape, and string them together, keeping them in place with hot glue. And that's it! Easy as one, two, three.
10. Print-Out Bunting
Or if you really aren't good at crafting, take an even easier shortcut than the one above and just print out a cute pattern like this one from Eighteen25, tape it to some string, and run a pompom garland through it if you're feeling fancy.
11. Skull Garlands And Spooky Signs
If you're not skilled with a sewing machine but don't love the way tape looks on your bunting, nip the predicament in the bud by using adhesive-paper cardstock like Eighteen25 did in their paper skull garland. Stick two cut-outs together over your string, and your problem is solved. Then add a touch of Edgar Allen Poe to your room with a ghostly poem print-out and enjoy the spooky vibes.
