Three DIY Halloween / Fall Décor Ideas

0

Decorating for the holidays is one of my favorite pastimes. I especially love to make a decoration myself! {I swear I will place them in their spot inside and outside of our house and then go back and stare at them proudly over and over, all season!}  One the years, I have made fabric garlands and small wreaths, but this year I made my favorite Halloween/Fall Décor items by far!

DIY Halloween Fall Décor

The first thing I made was BY FAR the easiest!

Glow-In-The-Dark Pumpkins!

You only need two or three things to have really pretty pumpkins to decorate during the day and fun GLOWING pumpkins at night.

What you Need:

  • Foam Carvable Pumpkins (I opted for the already white pumpkins because I thought they would take the glow paint better and I wouldn’t need a white primer.)
  • Rust-oleum Glow in the Dark Spray Paint. (I used one can for two pumpkins)
  • Either paint or Vinyl stickers to make designs.

Steps for Glowing Pumpkins:

  1. Make sure to clean your pumpkins, then take them outside or in a well-ventilated area and spray them with your Glow-In-The-Dark spray paint. I did about three layers of paint on each pumpkin letting it dry in between.
  2. For the designs my kids wanted their first initial on them, so I used my Circut machine to cut the letters and stick them to the pumpkins. I opted for a pretty font for my daughter and a more creepy font for my sons. If you do not have access to a vinyl cutter you could use black paint to draw designs or letters!
Pumpkin in the Daylight
Pumpkin in the Dark

What I love about this is that you can make it less Halloween-y and fit with your fall decor, or you can go all out and make it match your Halloween decorations!

The second craft I did was a little more involved, but it was still easy enough to do it in one day.

Pumpkin Planters

I’ll be honest, I was most excited about making these! I always see cute pumpkin planters at HEB and Walmart but they are so expensive. I wanted a way to recreate them but more within our budget! So I decided to make my own lightweight version using the plastic trick-or-treating buckets you can find at Wal-Mart in all different colors.

What You Will Need:

  • Plastic Trick-Or-Treating Pumpkins (These are normally around $1.00 at Wal-Mart)
  • White Primer Paint, and A Metallic or Stone spray paint.
  • Glue Gun
  • Flowers (and floral foam blocks if you are using fake flowers)
  • Wooden feet and Rope (optional)
  • Black Craft Paint (optional)

Steps for your Pumpkin Planters:

  1. The first thing you are going to do is decide how tall you want your planters, I thought three pumpkins high would be a good height without making it unstable. You will cut off the handles, and glue your pumpkins together like a totem pole. The only thing I would have done differently is I might have added some sand, or something to the bottom pumpkin to give it a little more weight and stability. I also suggest gluing the holes for the handles closed so that rain or condensation cannot get in and get gross (Unless you make drain holes in the bottom).

2. Once you have them glued you will take them outside or into a well-ventilated area and spray them with the primer spray. I even sprayed a little on the inside of the top open pumpkin so that the pink wasn’t easily seen. My primer wasn’t perfect, mostly because I was impatient and kept handling it when it wasn’t fully dry but you are just trying to mute the color of the pumpkin from showing through. So it doesn’t need to be perfect.

3. Once the primer is dry you can spray with the paint you choose to be the finished product. They have so many different sprays that have a stone-like finish, or metallic. The one I choose was supposed to be a Hammered Metal. This really is all up to your preference and what fits your esthetic.

4. Once they were painted, I realized I didn’t like how unstable they felt and was worried I would constantly be picking them up from falling over when I put them out on the porch. A quick trip to Wal-Mart and I found these Ready to Paint Caps, that I glued to the bottoms to make small feet which did two things, gave it a tiny bit more weight on the bottom and it gave it more stability on the concrete. I painted them black because I thought with the metallic finish I wanted a more gothic look rather than rustic.

DIY Halloween Fall DécorDIY Halloween Fall Décor

5. Now you can add your embellishments. I opted to get some Hemp rope, paint it black and wrap it around each seam where the pumpkins were glued together to complete the goth look and hide the seams. If you are using a stone-like finish you could make them more rustic with a large natural rope, or some burlap. Then you can do a few things with the top open pumpkin, you could get soil and plant real flowers in them (I assume you will want to make drain holes in them somehow if you choose this route), but since I kill plants, I opted to put a block of floral foam in the top and got a bunch of funky black and orange flowers from the craft section of Wal-Mart. My daughter said you could also use these as tall Candy bowls, so if you are hosting a party, this is a good idea too!

Now you have some pretty planters to frame your front door or welcome visitors!

DIY Halloween Fall Décor

This last DIY project was both easy and very budget-friendly! And the best part my kids were able to do it with me and thought it was hilarious!

Creepy Eyes

DIY Halloween Fall Décor

If you are looking for something fun to do with your kids, for under $ 10 (two sets of eyes), and add a little fun factor to your yard these Creepy Eyes are the project for you!

What You Will Need:

  • Plastic Bowls from the Dollar Store (You need two bowls for each set of eyes unless you want to make a Cyclops!)
  • Eye Decorations from the Dollar Store (these are in their Halloween decor section, you can pick from regular or cat like eyes. We got both. You could also just print a picture and use that!)
  • Red paint (We have a big stash of craft supplies so we had paint already)
  • Glue gun

Steps for your Creepy Eyes:

  1. The first step is to get your red paint and paint some squiggly lines all over the inside of the bowl. (For our cat eyes my son actually got green and yellow paint pens and colored the inside of the bowl with those instead of the red lines)

DIY Halloween Fall DécorDIY Halloween Fall Décor

2. Once your lines are painted and dried you need to paint the inside of the bowl white. I used the last of my primer from my Pumpkin Platers for this!!!

DIY Halloween Fall Décor

3. Once your bowls are dry, you will take the Eye decorations and glue them to the bottom of the bowl on the outside!

And BOOM you’re done! Now you can go find a bush or tree in your yard to hide them!

Which one of these projects are you going to try??? Be sure to tag us on social media so we can see you and your family’s creativity!!!

Previous articleMeet the Team: Erica
Next articleBaby Led Weaning: How I Went Wrong
Jennifer
Jennifer is a Coastal Bend Native, born and raised in Ingleside. She began contributing to the Corpus Christi Moms Blog in 2018 and stepped up as the Community Engagement Coordinator in 2019. She is happiest when she is crafting, writing, or doing anything artistic. She loves music, especially ANYTHING from the 90's, and is often seen dancing around the kitchen to Nsync while cooking dinner. She is married to Derik and has two kids, Connor and Keeley (pronounced Key-Lee). Jennifer still feels like a novice when it comes to parenting and enjoys letting other moms know they are not doing life alone. She also admits she watches copious amounts of Netflix, but balances that out by reading to and with her kiddos as much as possible each day.