Note: This is an oldie from the archives, but I thought I’d bring it back out to kick off October with a little Halloween fun!
Here’s a fun Halloween craft that Wyatt and I made last weekend — a ghost garland! Zach needed to work and I’m too scared to take both boys to the park by myself (Wyatt’s a runner!) so I needed a project that we could do around the house that would keep Wyatt out of the office. I’ve seen kits for these strings of ghosts at the craft store, but I couldn’t imagine that they would be difficult to put together and I was right.
I had initially planned to use big sheets of newsprint for the ghosts, but I couldn’t find my big pad so I used some cheap muslin instead. I’m much happier with the cloth than I would have been with the paper, so I’m kind of glad my newsprint went missing.
Here’s what you’ll need:
- Squares of muslin or other white cloth, approximately 18 inches square. There’s no need to be precise when cutting these — a ragged edge makes the ghosts spooky, or as my son says, “smooky.”
- Wads of newspaper — I found that a two page spread was just the right size.
- Pieces of string or yarn
- Sharpie marker
To make the garland:
- Wad one of the sheets of newspaper into a ball. This is a great job for your child.
- Hold up the wad of newspaper and drape one of the squares of cloth over the top.
- Cinch the cloth to make a “neck” for the ghost.
- Wrap the string around the ghost’s neck and knot it.
- Trim the ends if you like. I didn’t bother.
- Draw a face on your ghost. We made happy, sad and smooky…I mean, spooky faces.
- Repeat, making as many ghosts as you’d like. We made 14.
- Poke two holes in the top of your ghost about a half inch apart. I did this by folding the fabric at the top in half and then using a hole punch to punch about 1/4 inch down from the fold.
- String one ghost at a time onto a long piece of yarn or string, tying a simple knot to fasten it to the string. Repeat for each additional ghost, spacing them about 12 inches apart. I started in the middle of the piece of string and worked my way to one end. Then I started on the other side of the string and went the other direction.
Ta da! Now you have a fun Halloween decoration. We hung ours along our mantle, but this could be fun out on a front porch or something if you used weather-resistant materials inside the ghost instead of newspaper.
