Recently my 4 year old requested that we bust out the Halloween decorations. And I totally agreed with him. To me decorating takes up enough time that I want to be able to enjoy the decorations for a few weeks before having to take them all down. So I went to the basement and got out the rubbermaid that holds all the fall decorations and got out our Halloween ones.
We put out our Pottery Barn inspired chair covers
set up the chandelier spider web
and laid out our centerpiece of fake fur and creepy crawlies.
And that was all the Halloween decor we had. We will make our trip to the pumpkin patch for our pumpkins next weekend.
But pumpkins not withstanding he insisted that we needed more. We grabbed some pumpkin window clings on out next trip to Target and browsed their Halloween section brainstorming for things I could make from materials I already had on hand at home. Most of the time I just have a hard time buying something that I know I could make.
I went home and perused Pinterest for ideas, particularly focusing on bats because A is going to be batman this year (costume tutorial coming soon!) and I thought bats are still Halloween-ish but not too scary. I found this wreath and decided to use it as a jumping off point for mine.
Here’s how I made it:
[one] I made a wreath form from paper bags. I got this idea from Crafty Journal but do it a little differently.
- Cut down the side of both bags to open them up.
- Cut off the bottom part.
- Roll up one of the bags (roll from one of the long sides to the other long side)
- Twist.
- Roll the twisted bag up in the other bag.
- Insert one end into the other and tape them together.
You could totally skip out on making your own wreath form and get one for pretty cheap from Joannes or Michaels but I was trying to not spend anything and use up stuff I had on hand. Plus I got to watch my dog try to eat his way through the glass to get to me while I was on the dinning room floor making this. Don’t worry, this part only took like 5 minutes and he got to come in once I was done.
[two] Then I tore out the pages from an old book. I know, some people are going to hate me for this! BUT the book I used was in a pile of books that someone was discarding and so I thought that upcycling it would be ok since it was headed for the trash. I cut the pages in half and then trimmed off the margins so that I had some roughly square pieces to work with.
[three] I folded the pages diagonally so that there was a point in the center. I folded the bottom part of that point to the side so that I would have a surface to glue down to the wreath.
[four] I used my hot glue gun to glue down the pieces of paper. I tried to alternate the direction of my little points so that there would be some variety in the paper, making the wreath look random.
[five] For the bats I printed out this template from HGTV and shrank it down to two sizes that I thought looked good. Then I traced the shapes onto some old black envelopes that we had leftover from our wedding invitations. We were married 6 years ago so I’m glad to have finally used up the last envelopes. I hot glued the bats onto the wreath and added a piece of orange felt to hang the wreath on our door.
Not too shabby for something I made in one evening with stuff I had on hand. The boys like it, so I’m happy. We are thinking of adding some more bats to the door because the boys think there aren’t enough bats. I’m not sure what their idea of enough bats is so we shall have to see about adding more bats.
Do you decorate for Halloween? I’d love to hear what you do to make things festive this time of year.