10 Easy Halloween Party Decorations Made from Upcycled Materials

October rolls in early autumn, and with it, we start a series of fun and frightful celebrations. Halloween is a favorite holiday for kids, and it can be equally beloved by adults. The costumes are a blast. The haunted houses and numerous treats are wickedly delightful.

As with Christmas and many other holidays, decorating the house is possibly the more exciting part, especially if there is a party to follow. Luckily, coming up with easy Halloween decorations from upcycled is easy to do. Even better, it’s much better for the environment.

The following list of holiday upcycling projects can decorate the house and/or lawn from the ground to the sky. It includes tombstones, witchy apothecaries, spooky lighting, and scares dangling from above. Doesn’t that sound like Halloween done right?

Cardboard Tombstones

It’s simple but effective. Save a few cardboard boxes that come in the mail, or collect a few from the supermarket. Cut out a simple tombstone shape and add a little tab of cardboard to the back to hold it upright. Add whatever creepy tombstone messages might seem suitable for the expected audience. These can be set up in the front yard or somewhere in the house to make a graveyard.

Wine Cork Figures

Wine and champagne corks are perfect for making cute little Halloween figurines. When painted white and donned with a couple of eyes, they become adorable ghosts. Skeletons, Frankenstein, skulls, and Jack-o-lanterns are also easy to make from wine corks. These would be perfect to put above a bar.

Ghost Garland

Whether from old magazines, junk mail, newspapers, college papers, or whatever else, white paper is easy to convert into paper ghosts. Just sketch simple ghost shapes and cut them out. Use a hole punch to knock out two eyes. Make about 20 or 25 of these ghosts, and they can be pinned along a string or some yarn to create a garland.

Spooky Lanterns

For those out there who have been faithfully saving glass jars for months, Halloween might be the right time to put them to use. They can be decorated with a bit of paint or frosted with letters stenciled on them. Drop in a tea light to create a series of Halloween-themed lanterns with words like “boo”, “Happy Halloween” or whatever else sounds right.

Milk Carton Luminaries

For those who drink plant-based milk from Tetra Paks, these milk cartons can be cut up, carved even, to make fun luminary Jack-o-lanterns. Cut out typical spooky faces, drop a couple of rocks in the bottom of the Tetra Pak, and illuminate it with a tea candle. These would be fun lining a sidewalk on the way to the front door or gathering in a huddle on the fireplace mantle.

Potion Bottles & Jars

With a quick visit to the recycling bin (or a few of them), it should be easy to amass an eclectic collection of bottles and jars that will work perfectly for making cool potion ingredients. It’s just a matter of cleaning the jars, creating cool labels to glue on them, and putting in peculiarly colored liquids and powders.

Cut-Out Cats & Bats

Crafty woodworkers out there might have a stack of plywood offcuts or pallet boards hanging around the workshop. Draw a screeching cat or bat on the wood and use a jigsaw to cut it out. A bit of black paint will kick this craft up another notch, and it’ll make a fun decoration atop a shelf.

Boarded Windows & Doors

Nothing says spooky quite like an abandoned and boarded-up house or room. With a few strips of cardboard, it’s easy to make a boarded-up door or window. Add some details like wood grain or “keep out” written in a scary font. This could be the perfect way to prevent guests from going into off-limits parts of the house.

Glowing Eyes (a la Scooby-Doo)

Toilet paper and paper towel rolls are awesome for making those creepy Scooby-Doo eyes. Cut out two eye holes in a cardboard roll, and use battery-operated tea lights to illuminate the eyes. Tuck them around the house so that it seems someone or something is always watching.

Halloween Chandelier

Bats and spiders are perfect for Halloween chandeliers, and they are really simple to make. Cut the shapes of spiders and bats out from an old cereal box or similar packaging. Paint them black then hang them from them any dangling light fixtures around the house. Or, the bats can be from HVAC vents so that they move and swirl around.

Sure, it’s a bit of work to put together a collection of upcycled Halloween decorations, but what better way to build up the suspense? It’s the perfect kind of activity to do while watching a few horror films in the weeks leading up to that Halloween party.

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