Cheap Halloween Decorations

Halloween decorations (or any decorations for that matter) are a want and not a need around our house. I have a few decorations I have picked up at the dollar store or thrift stores, but not much. I have always wanted to go all out and decorate for a holiday, but have never had the money. Well with a few dollars and a little creativity I was able to decorate my house for Halloween.

I made these pumpkins using this tutorial with a few changes. I used card stock instead of construction paper, because I didn't have construction paper and two because I think it looks nicer. I also liked that I could use different patterned paper instead of just plain colors. The other change I made is that I didn't glue the strips to the toilet paper roll I just glued the ends of the strips to each other (my strips were 1 in by 8 1/2 ins). The card stock wouldn't stick to the toilet paper roll very well but it glues to itself pretty good and then it made a nice little place to stick the stem in and the strips just held it there with no glue.
I think they are pretty cute and your kids can help you although my 18 month old lost interest after putting glue on 2 strips and she just wanted to put glue all over everything.
I am also in the process of making one of these ghosts and some of these bats.
Anther great and cheap thing to use for Halloween decoration is spider webs I bought a bag of spider web for a dollar and just hung them everywhere.
They go a long way I didn't even use half the bag. So with a little bit of spider web and using bits of fabric and paper I had on hand I was able to decorate for Halloween for only a few bucks. What are some of your strategys for easy cheap holiday decorating?

Soft Blocks

Here is one of my projects I made last christmas for my daughter and never posted, so since Christmas Season is just around the corner (if you are making all your gifts, christmas is just around the corner) here is an idea for a young child.

I 1/8 of a yard (4 in) of 4 in foam. 4in foam is like $50/yard which at first turned me off, but when you only buy 1/8 of a yard and use a 40% off coupon it only cost about $5 and I was able to get 6 4in cubes. It doesn't take much fabric to cover them so to save a little money I raided my mother-in-law's fabric scraps for some brightly colored textured fabric. I tried to get lots of different textures so the blocks could be used as a learning tool for my then 9 month old. To cut down on the sewing I cut a 4.25 in by 12.5in piece of fabric and 2-4.25in pieces of the same fabric then I sewed the pieces together in a cube shape leaving on seam undone stuffed my 4 in cube inside and hand sewed up the final seam.

Formula Can Makeover

I like a good makeover. In fact I am watching what not to wear as I am writing this. Those of you that have babies may also have a lot of those empty formula cans laying around. When my daughter swithched over to just formula I was going through a can every few days. I felt bad throwing them out because they are really good cans and I thought they would be good for holding random things. But who wants the boring blue similac logo staring you in the face so I decided they needed a little makeover.
So I used a little decopauge and some scrapbooking paper and dressed it up. Here I made it a birthday can to fill it with candy or little toys for a cute little birthday gift.
At christmas time I decorated it with christmas paper filled it with christmas candy and used them for neighbor gifts (don't have a picture sorry, but you can use your imagination).
The posibilities are endless. They can be gifts or you can decorate them to match your childs room and use them for nic nacs. Now to go work on a makeover for those diaper boxes.

Craft Swap

I heard of someone doing this and decided that I wanted to host one. I sent an email out to a bunch of friends to see who wanted to participate. The was 7 of us which seemed like a good number. Each of us made 6 of something and then meet together and swapped so we went home with 6 different things. I made these bags full of goodies.

I took plan bags and decorated them using ribbon and material. Then I took two different size composition notebooks and made them pretty with some scrapbook paper and modge podge. I also made a matching pen by inserting matching paper into a clear pen.
I stole the following pictures from my friend. These are the things that I recieved.
A pack of very cute cards.
A christmas candle, fabric braclet, earrings, a hand drawn christmas card (very beautiful, and a puppet. In up coming days I will post how you can make some of these things yourself.

Grandma Brag Book

I made these cutie little grandma brag books for my mom and mother-in-law. All I did was buy a package of plastic card holders from walmart (< $1.50 for package of 12) and tied them together with scraps of ribbon that I had. They fit wallet size photos or i made mini scrap book pages using photoshop to put in it. Now Grandma has a whole book of photos small enough to carry around in her purse. There are 12 plastic card holders so I can send a new page every month with updated photos.

glass magnets

For craft night we made these cute little magnets. They are very simple. All you need is
clear glass rocks (I have seen them at the dollar store and craft stores)
glue that drys clear (you can use craft glue or elmers glue works too)
scrapbook paper
magnets

Trace the rock on the paper and cut it out. Then glue the paper to the bottom of the rock with the cute side of the paper showing through. Then attach the magnet to the back side of the paper. It is best to let the glue between the paper and rock dry a little before attaching the magnet. Some magnets come with sticky stuff on one side, but it yours don't just use glue. We used rubber cement but the regular glue seemed to work as well.
These make cheap easy gifts. I am making my husband's family all magnets for Christmas. I am printing out letters in cute fonts and spelling out their last name and then making magnets with everyones name in the family one magnet per name. I got that idea from my friend Chelsea.