Halloween At Home: Crafts with upcycled materials
Oct. 24—Finally, families can again enjoy the full experience of Halloween. While most youngsters will likely resume trick-or-treating next week, some families may want to limit the time spent out among strangers and larger crowds. For those folks, we present food, craft and entertainment ideas for rounding out the evening in delicious, creative and fun ways. Or use these ideas as a festive lineup for a holiday shindig. However your family chooses to celebrate, Happy Halloween !
Upcycling, recycling for Halloween Although the stores have a lot of Halloween decorations for sale, some of us might still be in a "stay-at-home " phase with this pandemic. So we asked Joy Shimabukuro, creative director of Ben Franklin Crafts, if there are ordinary household items that can be transformed into Halloween decorations. She came up with three cute ideas.
"These are totally recycled projects for the kids, so it shouldn't cost the parents anything to make, " Shimabukuro said.
Create a creepy crawly With crafts, it always helps to have an eye for objects with certain shapes. Shimabukuro came up with a clever idea for egg cartons, specifically the half-domed bottom sections. She cut out the individual egg holders and colored them. "They can use paint, but instead of paint, I just used a black Sharpie marker to color the inside, " she said. Her egg cartons were clear ; if you're using cardboard or plastic foam cartons, color the outside. "I added eyes, and if (you ) have pipe cleaners, great, but I just used black paper to make the spider legs."—RELATED :—RELATED :—RELATED :
Get batty With the holiday still a few days away, now might be the time to start saving your empty toilet paper rolls and paper towel rolls. Combined with black plastic garbage bags, they can be upcycled to create bat-like decorations.
First, cut the rolls into 3-to 4-inch sections, then the cut garbage bags into sheets a few inches wider than the rolls—2 or 3 inches extra on each side is good, depending on how big you want the wings to be. Wrap the plastic sheets around the rolls, twist the plastic around the ends, and use some colorful string or ribbon to tie things off. Fluff up the excess plastic and you have the body and wings.
Then take some scrap paper, use a dime to trace a circle on it, and cut them out and color them to make eyes. Cut up other pieces into elongated triangles to make fangs, coloring the tips red for blood. Tape or glue them onto the body.
You can add a trick-or-treating element to the bats by putting some candy or other treats in the roll before wrapping it up in the plastic sheets. "It kind of looks like those candy poppers, like at New Year's, " Shimabukuro said.
And since they're bats, hang them with string around the house, or if you do put candy in them, use them as mini-pinatas for the kids to "bat " around. Just be careful where you play the game so no one gets hurt and nothing gets damaged.
Jack-o'-fun Old copies of the Star-Advertiser come in handy for Shimabukuro's last suggestion : newspaper jack-o'-lanterns. Just scrunch up a sheet of newsprint into a ball and wrap it up with another sheet, cinching it at the top with raffia ribbon. Leave the ends sticking out to create the stem and leaves. Paint the ball orange and the stem and leaves green and brown. When it's dry, use a black marker or paint to make the eyes, nose and mouth.
