Looking for Halloween crafts for a party, a haunted house, or just for trick-or-treaters?
A good craft occupies you for hours, particularly if you enjoy it. Here are some ideas to get you started.
Decorations that keep
The best Halloween crafts are the ones that come out every year, so they are worth a little more effort than something disposable.
Crocheted or knitted ghosts, pumpkins and spiders. Small, quick, and they store flat. A crocheted spider with wire in the legs can be posed and reposed for years.
Painted or decorated pumpkins, rather than carved. A carved pumpkin collapses within days; an intact one decorated with paint or appliqués lasts weeks and can be composted at the end.
Jar lanterns. Clean jars, tissue paper and glue, with a tea light or LED inside. Simple enough for children and genuinely effective in a window.
Paper bats and garlands. Cheap, fast, and dramatic in quantity.
For a party
Think about what people will see from a distance. Fine detail is wasted; silhouettes and strong shapes read across a room.
Black paper shapes stuck to windows are one of the highest-impact things you can do, and cost almost nothing.
Lighting does more than decoration. LED candles in jars, a few coloured bulbs, and less overhead light transforms a room more than any number of objects.
For trick-or-treaters
A decorated container for sweets, made by whoever is handing them out, is a small thing that children notice.
Crocheted trick-or-treat bags are a good project – quick, reusable year after year, and far more durable than a plastic one. Work a stripe of light or reflective yarn into it; a child carrying it after dark becomes noticeably more visible to drivers.
With children
Halloween is forgiving. Rough edges read as character, which is not true of most crafts, so it is a good occasion for children to work independently.
Give them materials rather than a project, and resist tidying up their work.
Safety
Use LED candles rather than real ones anywhere near paper, fabric or yarn. It removes the only real hazard in the whole business and lets decorations be left unattended.
Keep anything trailing away from doorways and stairs.
Storage
Store everything together in one labelled box. The point of making decorations that last is having them all come out together next October, and the ones that get lost are the ones stored separately.
