DIY Ghost Family

My most recent Halloween decorations are these ghostly visitors! Ghosts, bats and pumpkins are probably my favourite Halloween characters. I like that these ghosts are so mobile and you can prop them up anywhere. If you have a garden by your front door, you could stick them into the lawn like scarecrows! I think one by itself would also be cute, but I thought if I was making one, I might as well make four. Don’t forget to make them different sizes, if you want a ghost family like me

You will need:
4 Balloons
Kitchen towel
PVA
Paint brush
4 Jam jars
White bin bags
White mesh / gauze / net (as long as it’s cheap and a little transparent!) I used 4 metres
4 sticks
Gardening wire
Wire cutters
Masking tape
Black Card

Step 1: Blow up your balloons and cover them in paper mache! If you haven’t done this before, just fill a jar with half water and half pva, dip strips of kitchen towel into the jar and smooth them, overlapping, onto the balloon. Do two or three layers, and put the balloons in jars so that they stay upright. Leave to dry overnight.

Step 2: Wrap wire around the top half of the stick to form ghost arms. If your wire is sliding down the stick, tape into place.

Step 3: Once your paper mache is fully dry, tape it onto the top of the stick to form the head!

Step 4:  Cut the handles off the bin bags and pull them over the top of the ghost. Secure the bin bags around the neck by tying with a bin bag handle. For larger ghosts, you might want to chop up the bin bags and tape them together to get a bigger ghost body!

Step 5: Drape your transparent fabric over the top of the ghost body and tie with a strip of fabric

Step 6: Cut out eyes and a mouth from the black card, and glue onto the ghost face.

There you have it, a nice family of ghosts to welcome you home until Halloween. Mine are currently inside lurking in dark corners, as it’s been rather rainy… I will put them outside for Halloween and hopefully we’ll get lots of trick or treaters!