4 Thrifty Halloween Crafts

With the dark nights drawing in, it is the perfect time of the year to start preparing for halloween.  My boys have grown in to this celebration, they never used to be as keen.  

I try to keep our crafting simple and not to costs a lot, so here are four thrifty and frugal ideas for halloween crafts that you can do with children of all ages.

Boo - Halloween Paperchain Ghost.  My boys are now big enough to draw a template and cut out their own ghosts, but when they were smaller I used to do the cutting and let them add the faces with a black pen.  You can find a template here is you need home.

Paper plate pumpkins.  My boys coloured their pumpkins in with pen,k but you could also do yours with orange paint or even stick orange tissue paper on it.  The faces are made up with pre cut black paper or felt which they stuck on themselves.

Balloon pumpkins - Nothing simpler than orange balloons and a sharpie, but these bring hours of fun.

Salt Dough ornaments

Basic recipe

2 cups of plain flour

1 cup of salt

1 cup of warm water

I also add 1 tablespoon of lemon juice to make the final decoration harder.

Mix the flour, salt and lemon juice adding water until you get a firm dough. Then knead the dough.  The more you knead the more pliable the dough will become.

We basically roll out the dough and cut out our decorations with a cookie cutter.  Then use a straw to cut out a hole for ribbon.

We cook our dough at the lowest oven temperature for 3 hours, then leave overnight before we paint and decorate them.