If you’ve been too busy studying for midterms to decorate or don’t have much of a budget for the holiday, don’t panic! Below are some simple and inexpensive ways to get any house or apartment ready for Halloween.
Line a Pathway With Ghostly Lanterns
All you need for this project are empty, clean gallon milk or water jugs, a sharpie and a light source. Draw scary faces on the jugs and insert artificial candles or white Christmas lights inside to create a glowing ghost. Line the jugs along a sidewalk or up a flight of stairs to make a creepy and fun path for trick-or-treaters or guests to follow. It’s extremely easy and a great way to recycle!
Fill a Jar with Creepy Specimen
Convert old glass jars into eerie terrariums or a mad scientist’s sinister samples. For the terrarium, gather moss, rocks or other natural materials. Add these and small Halloween decorations, such as fake spiders or tiny skulls, into a jar to create a miniature and frightening world. To make your apartment look like it’s been turned into a secret lab, put plastic eyeballs, insects and other spooky specimens into a jar. Fill with water and add a few drops of food coloring to complete the look.
String up a Candy Corn or Pumpkin Garland
No need to buy a Halloween-themed garland when you can easily make your own! Take paint chips with multiple shades of yellow or orange and cut into a triangle to recreate the tri-color and shape of candy corn. Use single color chips to cut out pumpkin shapes for a jack-o’-lantern themed garland. String together and hang on the wall to give any room that Halloween feel to it.
Mummify Your Front Door
Greet guests and leave a monstrous first impression with only white paper streamers and construction paper. Tape streamers to the door, wrinkling and overlapping them to give an ancient and wrapped appearance. Use the construction paper to make eyes and tape them near the top of the door. Bloodstains made from red sharpie or paint can also be added to give your door that little extra detail.
From Summer Season to the Season of the Witch
Recreate the iconic scene from The Wizard of Oz by reusing pool noodles from last summer. Cut the noodles to an appropriate length and paint a witchy design on them. Add shoes for the feet and any other decorations you like. Lastly, tuck under a piece of furniture to imitate the crushed legs of the Wicked Witch of the East.
Bonus: Ideas for Adding a Little Harry Potter Magic to any Room
Embrace your love of Harry Potter and Halloween with these easy projects. Use red acrylic or any other washable paint to write on a mirror and warn that the chamber of secrets has been opened. Stick a trail of fake spiders to the wall so that you can “follow the spiders”. Similar to the mad scientist’s experiments entry earlier, you can create potions by filling various sized glass jars or bottles with colored water and attaching labels like ‘Polyjuice Potion’ or ‘Amortentia’. If you’re having friends over, create a photo booth where they can recreate Sirius Black’s wanted poster using this tutorial
Now, time to spend all that money you saved on some candy!