Recycle shoeboxes to make creative Halloween crafts.
Each October, families and school children sit down together to make a variety of handmade crafts for Halloween. Haunted houses, monsters, graveyards and ghostly sayings set a dreary, frightful tone for any Halloween party or home decor. Don't discard empty shoeboxes, as these provide a great base for making each of these crafts. Does this Spark an idea?
Haunted Houses
A vertical shoebox resembles a tall house. Ghosts and a few run-down details make it haunted. Cover a lidded shoebox in purple construction paper. Glue on a rectangular door, windows and shutters cut from colored paper. Remember to decorate all sides. Angled shutters make houses appear decrepit. For ghosts, stick a thin wooden dowel into the bottom of a small plastic foam ball and drape a piece of white fabric over the top. Twist a white pipe cleaner around the outside under the head. At various angles (and on top of the house), slip dowels into holes poked into the box. Keeping the dowels hidden, glue the ghosts in place. Ghosts' eyes and mouths, door accessories, window panes, horizontal lines on shutters, house panels and other details are applied with black marker. Cotton batting pulled apart and strewn across the house creates an eerie, cobweb finish.
Monsters
With a little imagination, transform a vertical shoebox into a monster. Cover a lidded shoebox with green felt paper. Craft felt paper comes in many colors and has a soft texture that bends easily. Purchase it in craft stores or in the craft section of department stores. Glue black felt paper at the top for hair with zigzag bangs. Attach two large googly eyes underneath a large forehead. Angled, angry eyebrows are formed with black pipe cleaners. Add a large, green pom-pom nose and a mean, wiggly mouth and stitching on the forehead cut from black felt paper. Empty thread spools covered in gray felt paper and glued on each side of the head complete Frankenstein. Create your own monsters using yarn, construction paper, craft foam, plastic foam balls, paint and other materials.
Graveyards
A lidless shoebox can be turned into a creepy cemetery. Cover the inside and outside of the box with gray construction paper. Create a fence around the entire box along the outside and inside walls with a series of horizontal and vertical black pipe cleaners. Bend pipe cleaners into ornate designs for added decoration. Fill the shoebox slightly more than halfway with potting soil. Form trees by sticking twigs into the soil. Cut headstone shapes out of thick cardboard and cover both sides with granite or other textured spray paint. Once dry, add "R.I.P," dates or other wording with black marker and stand each headstone in the soil in rows. Pulled cotton batting spread across the graveyard and trees forms cobwebs, and black construction paper bat shapes glued onto the trees complete the graveyard scene.
Shining Cutouts
Some Halloween crafts stand out in the dark. Cover the outside of a lid and shoebox separately with black contact paper, so the lid is removable. Horizontally across the lid cut out a Halloween message, like "Boo," in large, thick letters. Leave unconnected lines within letters to prevent the insides of O's, B's and other letters from being cut away. Paint the inside bottom and sides of the shoebox with glow-in-the-dark paint and replace the lid. Set the shoebox on its side, and watch your message appear after dark. Alternatively, cut away shapes of Halloween objects from the lid, such as bats, spiders or ghosts.
Tags: felt paper, construction paper, with black, pipe cleaners, black felt