5 Steps to Create a Spooky Halloween Yard
When the air is chilly and crisp leaves scurry in the wind, Halloween is creeping closer. Everyone loves making Halloween costumes, but what about dressing up your house? This year, let your creativity run wild and get into the true Halloween spirit.
Come Halloween, houses look best when they appear haunted! Here are five easy DIY decorating ideas to make your house the spookiest one on the block. Enliven your community, make neighbors smile, and enjoy greeting delighted trick-or-treaters at your ghoulish house. As the children knock on your door, you will have them trembling with ghostly glee!
Ghoulish ghosts
No haunted house is complete without a few spooky ghosts haunting the premises. There are a few ways to make your ghosts come alive! You can wrap a mannequin or a family member in packing tape with the sticky side up, according to Thrillvania. Then wrap again with the sticky side down so the two pieces adhere.
Carefully remove the casing from your model, place LED rope lights inside, and hang your ghost in a window or on a tree branch. The packing tape will absorb the light and create a haunting glow, perfect for All Hallows’ Eve.
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A useful ghost tip from Homebnc is to take a white sheet and cut it to look ghoulish. Place a black light inside the sheets and hang it in a window. When the windows of the room are dark, the ghost will glow in such a haunting way, it will inspire squeals of delight from the neighborhood kids.
Scary sounds
A haunted house needs a few creaks, moans, and sporadic screams! Create the ambiance with hours of taped scary sound effects on YouTube. Try out this three-hour scary sound treat concert prepared by Calmed For Nature. Hook it up to a speaker using Bluetooth while you wait for trick-or-treaters who will be captivated by sounds of hooting owls, howling wolves, and creaking gates. What waits for them inside?!
(Allies Interactive / Shutterstock.com)
Haunted windows
Step inside for a moment, if you dare! Haunted houses have spooky windows, so dress them up with a ghoulish motif. According to Homebnc, you can hang terrifying tarantulas in your windows or even make the glass look blood-splattered.
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Make this a fun art project for kids by having them cut out zombie silhouettes using black paper, then affix them across the windows to create a walking zombie invasion suggests Dave Lowe Design. Some zealous zombie fans create wooden slats out of foam core with zombie hands and eyeballs popping out.
Bleeding candles
Create this easy, inexpensive, and scary DIY craft using red and white candles. Simply light and drip the red candle wax down the white candle. Or, suggests Jordan’s Easy Entertaining, you can melt a white votive candle in its holder in a pot of water. Meanwhile, chill the red candle and then dip it into the white wax. Place them on your porch. When you light your candles and the wax starts to drip, the candle will look like it is bleeding.
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Haunted graveyard
Haunted houses have haunted yards, so create a spooky setting with a graveyard. The main ingredients for your cemetery front yard are tombstones, bones, scary pumpkins, and a few ghouls. You can buy faux tombstones online or make them out of Styrofoam sheets, black spray paint, and acrylic paint, like these from HGTV.
Place the tombstones at random angles in the garden and be sure to add a skull or two, and place bones under the leaves. All of these items can be bought at a local craft store.
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According to Entertaining Diva, a scary cemetery ambiance comes from the lighting. Use cool-colored spotlights and shine them on the tombs and bones. Or use the LED spotlights that let you choose your own colors and change them at whim. Stringing fairy lights across tree branches and along fences also adds to the eerie effect and is bound to mesmerize the boys and girls out for trick-or-treating fun.
