Halloween Paper Crafts

HALLOWEEN PAPER CRAFTS

Simple, fun and easy ways to help kids celebrate Halloween.

Pumpkins, Haunted Houses, Witches and Zombies are easy paper, glitter, and glue projects for kids and kids love Halloween crafts. Haunted House is created out of black tag board and a few other Halloween colors (any sort of colored paper will do).   Witch and Zombie shapes are made out of poster board colors glued together but if you want to use brads to connect arms and legs etc so they can move, this works too.  When you figure out how to create and assemble these basic shapes, you can help kids create lots of Witches and Zombies in a variety of shapes and colors.  Put them in your windows ~ or anywhere!   

MATERIALS

Poster board, assorted colors, extra white.

Poster paint or acrylics, assorted colors, brushes, markers, scissors, glue, yarn or string or pipe cleaners, glitter and other decorations.

HOW TO ~

WITCH ~ Start by cutting simple shapes for witch.  Body is basically a big sort of long triangle (about 18" high but any size will do) with top point cut straight across.  Arms can be incorporated into the triangle as shown in picture or you can skip arms, or add arms with brads.  You can use traditional black or a color works too, like orange, pink or red.  Green works well for face and hands.  Hat is black and if you are not comfortable cutting hat shape, make a pattern using newspaper.  Perfect is not important!  Head is a basic circle shape, extended a bit where hat will be glued, and a neck which will be covered up with the dress.  Witch hair can be just about anything, yarn, straw, string, paper, poster board, or pipe cleaners.

Assemble your witch parts and glue pieces together.  Witch hair is glued to side of head first, hat next on top of hair.  When dry, witch is ready to be decorated.  Provide child with paint, glue and cut shapes like swirls and dots, glitter, and glue.   You can also provide google eyes, foil shapes like swirls, circles, and stars, and pom poms.  Encourage kids to have fun and make Witch fun and funky. 

ZOMBIE ~ Zombies are pretty simple shapes.  See the picture for help and ideas.  The head is a rectangle shape with a neck that will be covered when gluing on the body, which is a larger size rectangle or square.  The no neck look is good for Zombies.  Zombie hair can be cut from colored paper and glued on or kids can paint the hair but you should cut the jagged edge for them and incorporate into the head.   You can incorporate the legs into the body piece or add separately.  You can do the Zombie all white (to be painted) or in colors and along with paint you can provide cut shapes in fun colors.   You can also use brads to attach all body parts.  For clothing, face, etc poster or acrylic paints can be used.  You can cut some shapes for eyeballs and mouth or kids can paint them.  

PUMPKINS ~ Pumpkins are easy.  Cut a variety of sizes and let kids paint the faces or pre cut some black face parts and let them glue how they choose.  Pom poms are great, especially for very young kids as they can glue them all over and it's good for their small motor skills. Some glitter is always a good thing.

HAUNTED HOUSE ~ Kids love creating their own haunted house and they will have lots of creative choices once you help them with the basic house.  You can cut the house for them or do it together.  You probably don't need a pattern as the house is crooked and imperfect which makes it easy to make.  If you want to make a pattern out of newspaper, that is fine too.  It's always helpful to make some sketches on newspaper as well.  Include a fence with your house and cut out a big yellow moon and black crooked tree to add to house.  Once you have the house, moon and tree, you can cut out all of your shapes which would include, windows and doors, pumpkins, cat, owl, ghosts, bats, skeleton and any other shapes you prefer.  Provide a little tacky glue and a black marker and encourage child to place objects where they choose and then draw faces and details with marker. 

To make skeleton pattern, start with basic head shape, 2 squares, one on top of the other, bigger.  A small neck, square center body.  Do 2 long pieces each for arms and legs and add some extra to the ends of each long shape.  Hans and feet can just be rectangles, tapering a bit where connected to limbs.  Then round off all of your edges a bit, cut and use for a pattern.  Just make arms and legs do anything you like.