How To Make Halloween Decorations From Recycled Materials

If there was ever a time to get creative, Halloween is it! There's plenty of opportunity to make Halloween decorations from things you already own. This isn't just a good way to save money and help the environment. It's also a fantastic way to force yourself to get creative and have some fun in the process!

Use Up Those Old Egg Cartons

Everyone has egg cartons lying around (if you don't, start saving them up now). They're a firm favorite in the world of homemade decorations, and they're very useful if you're going to make Halloween decorations too. One idea is to cut it up into individual eggcups. Paint each one black and attach black pipe cleaners and googly eyes to create your own Halloween spiders.

Or you can use the egg cartons to create bats. Instead of cutting each eggcup individually, use a row of three for the bat. The middle cup forms its body, the outer cups are its wings (you can trim them to make them more wing-like). Again this is very simple and involves some black paint and stick on eyes!

The third idea for your old egg cartons is to make Halloween pumpkins. This involves cutting each cup out, and sticking two together so that they form a circle shape. Now you can decorate it with paint to look like an orange Halloween pumpkin.

Used Plastic Bags

Just about all of us have used plastic bags lying around the home. Put these to good use before throwing them out by creating some unique Halloween ghosts from them. As long as the bags are plain, or have enough of a plain area to make use of, your kids can decorate them with markers and cut them into ghostly shapes. These make great decorations for your Halloween party.

Old Tin Cans

Save up a few tin cans from your food as Halloween approaches and you can use them to make Halloween decorations with the kids. They can cover them in felt or colored paper and create scary faces for you to place around the home.

Using Ordinary Items In Creative Ways

This last tip isn't a single idea, more a frame of mind you'll want to get in if you want to make Halloween decorations out of recycled materials. Start collecting bottle tops, old buttons, colorful product wrappings, and anything else you think you could use. Start to use these in place of traditional craft items to put together collages, or to make creative displays of human figures. You'd be surprised at how creative you and your kids can be if you challenge yourselves to come up with something exciting from a few old items that you'd normally throw out!