Halloween is such a fun time to decorate your home and porch as the celebration of autumn and all that is spooky come together in October. All your artistic and crafty flair can come out as you can get your house in tip-top shape for parties and trick-or-treaters.

The great thing is that you needn’t go out and buy a ton of expensive adornments. You needn’t go out and buy a bunch of plastic that will likely end up in the trash, either.

Check out these wicked ways to clad your house for Halloween in the cheapest and easy ways possible.

1. Monster Candy Jars

This is as easy as grabbing some clear glass storage jars and either drawing on some monster or jack-o’-lantern faces with marker pens or gluing on some cut paper to resemble faces.

Once you have your design, you can fill the jack-o’-lantern jar with orange candies and fill the monster face jar with purple or green candies. Use these jars to decorate a shelf or mantle, or have them on hand when dishing out sweets to those that come knocking on Halloween night.

2. Wooden Candy Corn Ornaments

Source: Megan plus FIVE/YouTube

Here is a craft for those who are slightly woodwork inclined. To be fair though, it just takes someone cutting a few short lengths out of a piece of scrap 2×4 and doing some sanding.

Cut your ‘candy corn‘ pieces to be between 4-8 inches long. If you are doing multiple, make sure that they are different heights so that they look cool congregated together on a shelf.  Once you have your blocks, you need to cut them into pyramid-like shapes.

Next, sand the rough edges to give a more rounded look.  Now, take those classic candy corn colors and paint your blocks to resemble that famous white, orange and yellow confection. Once the paint has dried, you can further sand the wood to give it a vintage/distressed look. Dry brushing some brown paint along the edges will further help to age the ornament.

3. Haunted Birdhouse

Source: Raybuck Auto Body Parts/YouTube

If you have an old birdhouse that has seen its best days, or you happen to spot one at a thrift store, you could give it a makeover to look like an old haunted house. This can be as simple as painting it black and adding some cobwebs or twigs to look like dead trees. If you have a few houses, you could make a whole haunted village display for your countertop.

Depending on how handy you are with wood and tools, you could also knock a few up made from pallets. Free wood! 

4. Blood-Dripped Candles

Making blood-dripped candles involves hot wax and fire. This is a craft that needs a lot of care and could get very messy. However, the result is pretty gory and would look amazing at Halloween. First of all, you will need some white pillar candles and a red candle.

The idea is to drop red wax over the white candle so that it drips down the sides looking like blood. You have to light the red candle and accumulate some liquid wax. Once you have enough liquid start to pour it over the wick of the white candle and allow it to tumble down the sides. Be sure to have something under the white candle to catch any stray dribbles of red wax.

5. Soda Can Lantern

Source: Craft Your Happiness/YouTube

This is a craft for adults as it requires the use of a craft knife and sharp metal edges. Be careful! All you need is some empty, clean, soda cans, which can be recycled as normal after the holiday is over, some Halloween-inspired paint colors (probably orange or black), a craft knife, and some LED tea lights.

Paint the outside of a can, including the top and bottom. Leave the ring pull attached as this works to hang your lantern. Next, insert the craft knife into the can about an inch from the top and cut a vertical incision to about half an inch from the bottom. Moving about half an inch around the can, make another parallel incision. Do this all around the can.

Next, push gently on the top of the can so that the sides splay out creating a lantern effect. Turn an LED tealight on and CAREFULLY—sharp edges— insert it into the lantern through one of the gaps.

You can either string a few of these lanterns together with a piece of cord thread through the ring pulls or set them on shelves or mantles.

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