2 Great Halloween Craft Projects with Step-By-Step Photos

Halloween is a great time to share a wonderful arts and crafts experience with your kids. Here are two exciting craft projects you can make to decorate your home this Halloween! Click on the links to see step-by-step photos for each craft project

Halloween Wreath

Click on the link below to view step-by-step photos

Halloween Wreath Step-by-Step Photos

You will need: A ruler, scissors, a pencil, glue, or a stapler, black, orange, yellow, and white construction paper. You will also need cardboard or poster board for the base, but a cereal box or soda box can be used as well. Optional: Ribbon or string for hanging

First, use a round plate or bowl about 11 inches in diameter and trace onto the cardboard you plan to use for the base. Use a smaller plate or cup to trace the middle circle and cut around both-leaving you with a cardboard "wreath" this is your base. Use some string,ribbon or create a loop out of construction paper.

Next use your ruler to measure out strips on the construction paper about an inch and a half wide. Stack one page of orange, black, and yellow construction paper together and cut along the lines you have made.

Once you have completed cutting the vertical strips cut them in half leaving you with nearly 6 inch strips in all colors.

Now start making rings out of this construction paper, affixing them with glue or staples. (a stapler works faster and better with this task, the glue stick takes a little bit of extra time to dry)

Now that you have the rings together you can begin sticking them to the base using glue.

Arrange the rings in different color patterns as you put them on the base.

Your wreath should be taking shape now!

You can personalize your wreath any way you like. Cut out a few black bats and paste them onto the wreath, or hang one from the middle, or maybe create some ghosts or pumpkins. Let your children add their own creative touches to make it their own!

For clipart search Google Images, keyword "halloween clipart"

Halloween Calendar

Click on the link below to view step-by-step photos!

Halloween Calendar Craft Step-by-Step Photos

The idea for the Halloween Calendar is to include your children in the countdown to Halloween as well as for a fun decoration!

You will need: A poster board, markers, construction paper, glue/stapler, pencil, scissors, string or ribbon, and a ruler.

Start off by sizing up your poster board, you will need to create a calendar but first leave room at the top for the month and days of the week. In the example, I used the ruler and measured 6 inches from the top.

Using construction paper, cut out 36 3 inch squares in various colors.

The squares do not need to be perfect, this will add character and variation to the overall look.

Next, cut 36 smaller squares, again, don't worry about making them perfect, as you put it together, the look will come together.

Line up the first row of squares and glue down, then start attaching the next several rows of large squares. Once complete begin gluing down the smaller squares as shown in the pictures.

Once you have completed the squares, write the days of the week using a pencil, marker, or print from your computer. Cut several squares and glue to the poster board. Now, on each square, number the days. For October 2010 the 1^st is on Friday.

For the month you can use a pencil to write out OCTOBER at the top and use markers to embellish or find a font that you like and print it from your computer, cut out each letter, and glue to the poster board.

Once you have the base of the calendar complete start decorating. In our example, we printed a large bat and colored with a black marker. We cut it out and glued it on. Also, we embellished Halloween Day with a cute "trick or treat" bag.

You can also draw and cut out pumpkins, bats, and ghosts using construction paper.

Affix string or ribbon to the back of the poster board so that you can hang it on the wall or use tacks instead.

You can use stickers to mark each day to countdown to Halloween!

For fun Halloween cutouts search Google Images using Halloween Coloring Pages, it will give you tons of fun ideas to decorate your new calendar!