By: Dahianna Murillo, Daniella Pardo, Staff Writers
Halloween is just around the corner and you want to be able to deck your place out to fit the mood, but as a high school student, you’re pretty limited financially. These quick and easy DIYs save you a lot of money and time, and give you originality that will make this Halloween extra spooktacular.
Decor
One major part of the Halloween tradition is to make your house look as scary as possible, but buying high end decor can add up. Here we have a couple of crafts that are easy to make at home. With these decorations, you will even make trick-or-treaters hesitate before knocking on your door.
Creepy Wall Hangings:
If you have blank spaces on your wall, fill them up with your very own customizable wall hangings. Using $1-2 wooden embroidery hoops easily found at any craft store, use them as a placeholder for your image. Next, print out the images of your choice, trace, and cut a circle around the images that fits your embroidery hoop. Then, trace the image onto a piece of fabric. Finally, you can glue down the fabric onto the hoop and tie a string to it.
Ghostly Lanterns:
Want to have something to place on your windows or front porch? Then these lanterns will do the trick. Take any empty gallon milk jugs, wash and dry them thoroughly. Next, fill them up with holiday lights that you may have stored for Christmas, but make sure they’re already turned on when placed inside the jugs. Finally, draw scary faces on your lanterns with a permanent marker and you’re done.
Witch Wreath:
Unlike their Christmas counterpart, these wreaths can add an ominous feel to your house. They can be made by buying a $3 wooden wreath at your local craft store, then spray paint it black or grey. To add the accessories, just take some black and white fabrics and cut them into the shape of ghosts and bats, then glue them onto your wreath. You can also pull apart cotton balls into strands to wrap them around your wreath, this will give it that cobweb effect.
Food
While decorations are one way of getting into the spooky spirit, let’s take it one step further with some fun and delicious food creations that are simply to die for.
Jack Skellington Chocolate Covered Apples:
To make this iconic character-inspired treat, all you have to do is get some apples, white chocolate, and black frosting. First, you pour the white chocolate into a bowl, next you dip the apples into the chocolate and let them dry. Finally, with the black frosting decorate the apples to look like Jack.
Witch Brooms:
Take a Reese’s candy and remove the paper cup. Then place the candy upside down. Take a thin pretzel stick and insert it into the top of the upside down Reese. Repeat the process a couple more times and now you have a whole set of broom sticks.
Frankenstein Cake Pops:
This monster snack is perfect for any party. Gather plain white marshmallows, different colored frostings, white chocolate, food dye, and toothpicks. First off, mix a green food dye in the white chocolate to make the skin color. Next, with the frosting start designing Frankenstein’s hair, eyes, mouth, stitches, etc. and set it aside to harden. Last but not least, take the toothpicks and stick them into each marshmallow just enough so that it doesn’t pierce all the way through. Now you have made a cool looking treat for everyone to enjoy.
Pretzel Pumpkins:
First, take some white chocolate and mix in some orange food dye, then dip the pretzels into the chocolate and let it harden. The last step is to take some green frosting and place a dot at the top of each pretzel to resemble the stem.
Bowl of Worms:
Scaring your friends with a gross looking bowl of worms can be a great prank. First you want to buy red gummy worms and a pack of red straws (the ones that are bendable at the top). To emulate the ridges that actual worms have, cut the top of the straws off – this is so that the red gummy worms can be placed in the bendable parts. Keep repeating this process until you have filled up your bowl.
Costumes
Costumes are by far one of the most fun parts about Halloween, but also one of the priciest. These quick and easy DIYs help you look the part, while keeping your piggy bank unsmashed.
Classic Black Cat:
One of Halloween’s ageless costumes is the traditional Black Cat. Use all black clothing, then buy some cat ears. Lastly, with black eyeliner draw a cat nose and whiskers, and there you go – it’s as simple as that.
Mermaid:
This classic look never goes out of style. All you’ll need is a blue/green maxi skirt, a white tank top or bandeau, and fake sea shells you could buy for cheap on amazon. You can also take fishnet stockings and place them on your cheekbones and forehead, and dust blue/green/purple powder over it, thus creating the fish scale look on your skin.
Wednesday Addams:
You can achieve this famous character’s look with very few steps. You’ll just need an all black outfit with a white collared shirt underneath, for Wednesday’s classic white collar, and matching braided pigtails. Put on some pale white face powder and black lipstick. Now you look absolutely ghoulish.
Identity Theft:
This witty costume is incredibly easy to put together. You just need a black shirt and name tags. Write random names on the name tags, stick them all over your shirt, and voila! You have your costume.
Domino:
This cute and simple look has very little put into it, but looks incredible nonetheless. Just wear a black t-shirt and black leggings, using a glue gun glue some white felt circles on them and a long strip of white felt (about two inches wide) across the bottom of your shirt.
Cactus:
This adorable, trendy costume may seem unusual but it’s sure to grab everyone’s attention. All you’ll need to do is hot glue some pieces of white yarn to a green dress/green shirt and pants, and stick some fake flowers on the sleeves and a headband.
Halloween Playlist
With every passing Halloween comes the parties, whether you’re the one attending or hosting you want to have music that has the ability to bewitch your guests. Here are our top ten picks that will help raise your party from the dead.
- Michael Jackson- “Thriller”
- Rihanna- “Disturbia”
- Katy Perry ft. Kanye West- “E.T.”
- Imagine Dragons- “Demons”
- Panic! At The Disco- “Emperor’s New Clothes”
- Bette Midler- “I Put A Spell On You”
- China Anne McClain- “Calling All The Monsters”
- “The Nightmare Before Christmas” Soundtrack- “This Is Halloween”
- The Living Tombstone- “Spooky Scary Skeletons (Extended Remix)”
- “The Munsters”- “Opening Theme Song (Extended Version)”
