Not only is it fall, but Halloween is on the horizon, and the holiday provides the perfect opportunity to decorate your home. If you want to stick to a budget or you’d prefer to up-cycle, we have the guide for you.
1. Take your pumpkin décor to the next level. Cut out leaves from magazines, wallpaper samples, and wrapping paper. Using mod podge – one cup of glue to 1/3 cup of water - place the cutouts onto real or decorative pumpkins.
Alternately, create leaf-shaped stencils to paint onto your pumpkins. Once dry, use a marker to add decorative details.
2. Thrift stores often have a great selection of Halloween decorations, including imitation spider webs. Create a creepy display by hanging the imitation web from branches of your trees or bushes. Decorate with toy spiders, which you can find at discount stores – and spray-paint black.
3. If the discount shop toy spiders and creepy crawlies are a bust, you can make your own using black balloons and cut out black felt or cardboard legs. Blow up one black balloon for the body and one smaller black balloon for the head. Tie the two balloon knots together to form the spider. If the weather is dismal, make the legs using a wire hanger or craft wire. Wrap in black cloth, old pantyhose, or fake fur – again, all easily accessible at your local hobby store or discount shop. Hold the material of your choice in place with hot glue, then twist the ends of four lengths together. Repeat with the remaining four legs and assemble your balloon spider by attaching legs bundles with pipe cleaners around the neck of the spider.
4. Add a little spook to a room in no time at all by draping white sheets over furniture. Add faux cobwebs to mirrors, paintings, and pictures on walls. Furthermore, a few taper candles will add an eerie feeling you’re looking for if you’re hosting a party or having a scary movie night in with the family.
5. You can turn orange tissue-paper balls (often used as decoration hung from a ceiling) into jack-o-lanterns to decorate your porch or hallway. Complete the look by cutting facial features and stems from black construction paper and glue.
6. Use strands of black ribbon tied around branches outside or indoors to create simple but effective bats.
7. You can create beautiful, dramatic spider webs out of black garbage bags. Lay a trash bag, draw a spider web, then cut out the negative space.
8. Make a scary menagerie by spray-painting plastic animals you find at your local thrift store and add red glitter or glow-in-the-dark paint to their eyes.
9. Using stick-on googly eyes, turn ordinary black plastic cups into cute monster creations.
10. Make washing your hands super scary by adding plastic, creepy crawlies, eyeballs, bats, and pumpkins to your hand soap, preferably a transparent or clear liquid.
Bonus
If you are a gardener, don’t put away your tomato cages just yet. Wrap them in string lights, draw a face on an old white pillowcase, and place the pillowcase over the tomato cages to create ghouls and ghosts for the yard.
We hope you have a safe and happy Halloween with our cost-saving top ten decorations. If you are interested in opening a savings account, please visit a branch in New Berlin, Springfield, Modesto, or Palmyra.