8 Great Homemade Halloween Decorations

Halloween is a great time to get creative. Homemade decorations will give your celebration a unique and personal touch without breaking the bank. All of the following Halloween decorations are easy to make using inexpensive items you can find in craft, hardware or discount shops.

1. Halloween Tree

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Evoke that spooky 'Nightmare Before Christmas' feeling with a Halloween tree. Find a fallen limb with branches.  Remove any lose bark and dust it down with a damp cloth. You can leave in its natural state or spray-paint it black or a florescent color. Set it up in a regular Christmas tree stand and drape black cloth around the base. Wrap orange LED Christmas lights around the branches. Use plastic chains as garlands.  Decorate the tree with Halloween party favors such as bats, spiders, miniature skeletons and jack o' lanterns. 

2. Hanging Heads

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Decapitated heads hanging from the ceiling are a grisly, gruesome sight.  Use creepy full-head rubber masks left over from previous Halloween costumes or buy cheap masks from a discount store.  Put a safety pin through the top of the head so you can attach a string for hanging.  Blow up a balloon to the appropriate size to fit inside the mask and fill it out.  Roughly sew a piece of red fabric around the bottom of mask and pin, sew or tie it to hold the balloon in.  If the mask has holes where eyes should be, fill them in with plastic Halloween eyeballs before inserting the balloon.

3. Glowing ghouls

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Spook houses make good use of glowing florescent props illuminated with black lights.  You can get the same effect at home using florescent tempura poster paints and black light bulbs that screw into ordinary lamp sockets.  Paint ghostly figures onto white or florescent poster paper and hang them along the walls as backdrops.  You can find simple designs to copy by searching online for Halloween coloring pages.  Draw the outline of the image with a thick black marker and color-in with the poster paint. 

4. Icy Hand

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A severed hand rising from your punch bowl will give your guests the chills.  Fill a plastic jug with a quart of water and add food coloring in a contrasting color to your punch.  (For example, if the punch is orange, use green or blue.)  Pour the colored water into an unlined vinyl glove.  Tie the wrist tightly with a twist tie and test for leaks before freezing overnight.  Just before your party, cut away the glove and place the hand in your punch.  Tip:  if you skip the food coloring and fill the glove with flat tonic water, the hand will glow in black light.

5. Cardboard Coffin

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Whether human-sized or miniature, a coffin will add a macabre touch to your Halloween theme.  Draw a classic six-sided coffin shape onto a sheet of cardboard and cut it out with a craft knife.  Trace the design onto a second piece of cardboard and cut out another identical piece.  Measure the perimeter of the coffin shape and cut a long rectangular piece of cardboard to form the sides.  Use duct tape to attach the long piece to the top and bottom of the coffin, bending it at the corners.  Spray-paint the coffin black and decorate as desired.

6. Bubbling Cauldron

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A cauldron full of gruesome witches' brew is a great Halloween prop that can be used indoors or out.  This version looks realistic, but is not in danger of spilling.  Buy a cheap plastic cauldron and some spray-foam insulation.  Fill the cauldron with the insulation, spraying some over the sides to look as though it is bubbling over.  After it has dried, spray-paint with a fluorescent color.  For potion ingredients, glue on plastic Halloween party favors such as eyeballs, bats, rats and snakes.

7. Creepy Cobwebs

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These sinister cobwebs can be hung in doorways, used as a room divider or dangled from your front porch.  Cut a length of cheesecloth fabric to fit the space you want to decorate.  Pin it to the doorframe or ceiling with thumbtacks.  Cut a series of vertical strips in the cloth, anywhere from two to six inches apart.  Cut the center strips so that they are shorter than those at the edges.  Use your hands and scissors to tear and tatter the cheesecloth.  Pull it apart and fray the edges.  Once you are pleased with the cobweb effect, glue or sew on several small plastic spiders.

8. Wind o' lantern

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Greet trick-or-treaters or party guests with a giant jack o' lantern grinning from your window.  Choose a window at the front of your house or apartment and measure the dimensions.  Cut a piece of corrugated cardboard to fit tightly into the frame.  Draw a large jack o' lantern face on the cardboard, leaving a couple of inches on each side.  Use a craft knife to cut out the features, then install the shade. When it's dark outside and lights are on in the room, the creepy features will glow.