Make Your Own Halloween Necklace with Your Kids!

As we near the end of October, it becomes unmistakably the Halloween season. Porches are adorned with wooden witches and carefully carved pumpkins. The stores are full of bags and bags of Halloween candy and all varieties of costumes. This time of year, we do many crafts with our kids without even thinking of it: create costumes, carve pumpkins and bake Halloween treats. Here is another fun craft to do with your kids of any age: a Halloween-themed necklace. This craft can be done with young children or older children. You just need to help more with the younger ones.

Basically, you will first make dough and then mold it into familiar Halloween shapes: Candy corn and pumpkins are easy but you could also try something more difficult like a cat's head or bones. This craft can also be done with Fimo for a more professional and durable necklace, but making the dough is lots of fun, especially for younger children!

First, the recipe for the salt dough:

You will need:

2 cups of flour

½ cup salt

¾ cup hot water

Mix together the flour and salt and then add the hot water. Stir it up. It should end up being a nice play-dough-like consistency. If it is too sticky, add more flour. If it is too dry, add more water. When I did this craft with my kids, we had to add about another cup of flour to make it the correct consistency. Experiment to find what combination works best for you. If you want, chill the dough for a while in the refrigerator. This will make it a little easier to work with. This recipe will make enough dough for several necklaces.

After making the dough, mold it into pyramid-like shapes for candy corn and spherical shapes for pumpkins. These will be beads to put on your necklace. I also like to make smaller spherical beads to place between the pumpkins and candy corn. Place your creations on a cookie sheet and use a toothpick to poke one hole in each bead. These holes tend to close up a little bit while baking, so I wiggle the toothpick around to make sure it is big enough for string to go through. Then bake at about 200-250 degrees for about a half an hour. When your beads come out, they will still be a little springy feeling but they will be hard enough to paint and use in your necklace. Let them cool.

Later, when your beads have cooled enough to handle, you can paint them! I make pallets out of egg cartons and put a different Halloween-themed color in each hole: orange, black, yellow, white and purple work well. Then get to painting!

Once painted, you can leave the beads as they are or you can do additional decorating: Sprinkle them with glitter for a more glamorous look or if you want to make them look cutesy, let the paint dry and then draw faces on the candy corn and pumpkins with a black permanent marker.

To complete the necklace, you can use embroidery floss and an embroidery needle, or if you have made the holes large enough, just stick some embroidery floss, ribbon or string through the holes.

That's it! Just remember to keep these necklaces away from babies and toddlers as the beads are not baby-proof and could be chewed up. Have a great time and Happy Halloween!