Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Make Halloween Arts and Crafts Fun With Tantalizing Home Decor

By Kathy Pratts

Wouldn't it be awesome to do some Halloween arts and crafts to transform your home into one of the scariest haunted houses in town? Your kids will absolutely love this idea. All you need is a theme, some accessories, appropriate lighting and sound effects.

Cemetery Halloween Arts and Crafts Theme

Think about coffins, bones, stone hedges, and dead bodies as Halloween arts and crafts for a cemetery theme.

You can use a cardboard box in making a scary coffin. Also get a large-size cardboard piece and cut out the shape of a coffin for the opening/cover. Paint a red or white cross over the top of the coffin.

Imitate the sound of stepping over a mass of bones by drying bread in the oven and placing them under an area rug.

Use a Styrofoam for a tombstone, paint them gray, and write R.I.P. over them with a marker. You can also write your names or guest's names for that spooky feeling.

For the body parts, you can start by stuffing rubber/latex gloves with cotton and painting the opening red for that bloody effect.

For your decor, filling goblets with blood and displaying them in hallways and your dining area will definitely add a realistic touch to the whole theme! This will enhance that vampire-in-coffin feel. You can purchase clear plastic goblets and have fun mixing red food coloring. Make the blood thicker by adding cornstarch to the mixture.

A Pumpkin Yard Halloween Arts And Crafts Theme

If you want a really chilling yet unique Halloween arts and crafts pumpkin theme, you don't always have to use real pumpkins. Use other fruits such as green bell peppers and mandarins and place tea candles in them to create scary faces.

Spreading dried leaves and fake cobwebs along the hallway and on the tables will also add a forlorn look to the whole place. Hang sticks in your porch. Place plastic spiders, rats and eyeballs within the mass of dead leaves and sticks.

Another Halloween arts and crafts idea is to make a very scary scarecrow for your pumpkin yard. Hang an old, dusty shirt over a clothes hanger. Staple the bottom part of the shirt and stuff it with hay or dead grass. Use dead branches for the arms. Then, use a witch's hat for the covered scarecrow head. Punch a hole in the hat where the hook of the hanger can go through. Hang the body over windows, doors or cabinet handles.

You can use cotton for cobwebs and you can spread it all over the place for each theme. You can also use washable paint on your windows-you can either use spooking green all over or apply splashes of red for "blood".

For an eerie lighting effect, you can simply replace your white bulbs with black, orange or red ones. You can also cover lamps with colored cloth or netting for eerie shadows.

Scary sounds can be easily downloaded online. Choose sounds of creaking doors, howling wolves, screaming, and ghosts.

Choosing a theme, creating the props and setting the mood and ambiance of your chosen theme with Halloween arts and crafts is exciting. Just try to be creative and have fun while decorating!

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