With the spooky season upon us, it’s time for some family craft time.
Celebrate the season with these fun crafts using items you probably already have lying around the house. And if you don’t, get creative. All of these crafts are a starting point to spark your imagination — have fun making them your own.
Toilet Paper Tube Cat
This cute black cat is a cinch to make. You can use a leftover toilet paper tube or cut up a paper towel tube to size. Simply press the top of the tube inward to create the cat’s ears and crease well. If desired, glue can be added, but the shape holds well on its own. Now that you have the basic shape, the cat can be colored with markers or acrylic paint, even crayons. A white crayon works against black to make the details really pop. When you’re finished customizing your cat, just poke a pipe cleaner in the back for a tail. Now go forth and create your cat army.
Monster Headband
With some pipe cleaners and a headband, you can make your very own monster headband. This one is highly customizable and imaginative. All you have to do is twist the pipe cleaners to a headband and you have a variety of horns, ears or eye stalks. Your kids will have a blast coming up with new monsters and it might even give them inspiration for their Halloween costume.
Monster Book
Not only is this a fun craft, it is also a great way to upcycle old books. This hardcover was a discard from a local library and now it is a fun decoration for Halloween. For this craft, you can dilute some acrylic paint with water and dab it onto the cover with a paper towel for a weathered look. You can use a mixture of green and black for that murky look, but get creative. Don’t forget to add paint to the sides of the pages for extra effect. After the paint has dried, crinkle the pages to give the “mouth” a more open look. And then the customization is up to you. You can cut some teeth out of paper, give the book googly eyes and a forked-pipe-cleaner tongue — but the possibilities are endless.
Pumpkin Plate
The pumpkin plate is a timeless classic for good reason. It’s easy to do and looks cute every time. You can paint the plate or use markers to color it orange, and then sketch out the face. Here, we cut out the face by gently folding the plate and cutting with scissors, but an alternative is to draw the face with markers or use construction paper to glue the face to the plate. The method can be adjusted to any age level, and there’s no wrong answers here.
Toilet Paper Tube Spider
Hopefully you saved some of those tubes from your cat army. Cutting one toilet paper tube in half gives you two spider bodies. Fold in each open side to create the shape and then paint or color the body black. After it dries, you can glue on some eyes or draw them on. Then, cut four pipe cleaners in half for the legs. The eight legs can be inserted into the sides of the pinched together tube and glued in for extra security.
By Lindsay Schiro
Leave a Reply