Halloween Crafts

The basic material list

• Black, white and orange paper or thin card.
• Empty jam jars, tins and cardboard tubes.
• White muslin, an old sheet or cotton wool.
• Twine, wooden skewers, wire and clothes pegs.
• Leaves, twigs, chestnuts, acorns, pine cones and moss.
• Scissors, glue, a black marker and battery tea lights.

Paper bats

Fold a sheet of black paper in half, draw half a bat against the fold — a curved wing, a small body, two ears — and cut it out. Opening it gives a symmetrical bat every time, which is why this is the first project to do with young children.

Make them in three sizes and attach them to a wall in a rising diagonal, with the smallest at the top. Fold the wings slightly forward so they stand away from the surface and cast a shadow. Hung from thread at different heights in a doorway or window, the same shapes turn into a mobile.

Jar lanterns

Clean a jam jar and remove the label. Cut a face, a cat, a bat or a moon from black paper and glue it to the outside, or paint the whole jar with diluted white glue and press on torn tissue paper for a stained-glass effect.

Wrap the neck with twine, add a wire handle if you want to hang it, and put an LED tea light inside. A row of five along a windowsill or a path is far more atmospheric than one large decoration, and children can make them almost unsupervised.

Hanging ghosts

• Scrunch a ball of cotton wool, newspaper or a small polystyrene ball for the head.
• Drape a square of white muslin or old sheet over it.
• Tie a thread around the neck to hold the shape, leaving a long end to hang it by.
• Draw two eyes with a black marker, keeping them simple and friendly.
• Hang several at different heights in a window or from a branch in a vase.
• For an outdoor version, use a battery tea light in place of the head so they glow at dusk.

Window silhouettes

This is the highest-impact, lowest-cost project in the whole list. Cut shapes from black paper — bats in flight, a cat with an arched back, a witch on a broom, a row of rooftops, a bare tree — and tape them to the inside of the window glass.

From the street, with a lamp on inside, they read as a crisp silhouette against warm light. Group them: a cluster of bats leaving one corner works better than a single shape in the middle of the pane. Removed after Halloween, they leave no trace and store flat in an envelope for next year.

Natural material projects

Chestnut spiders are the classic Austrian autumn craft: a chestnut for the body, eight short matchsticks or twigs for legs, two dots for eyes. Acorn caps glued to a wooden bead make small woodland figures, and a wreath of vine or willow with dried leaves, physalis and a few pine cones needs no Halloween motif at all to fit the season.

Pressed leaves are worth doing early. Collect them, press them flat between newspaper under a heavy book for three or four days, and they will keep well enough for garlands, place cards and window decorations. Threaded onto twine, a leaf garland is the most attractive piece of autumn decoration you can make in twenty minutes.

Projects by age

• Three to five years: gluing pre-cut shapes, painting mini pumpkins, chestnut figures, potato printing.
• Six to nine years: folded paper bats, jar lanterns, hanging ghosts, leaf garlands.
• Ten and up: window silhouettes with fine detail, wreaths, papier-mâché masks, relief pumpkin carving under supervision.
• Adults: dried flower arrangements, wax-dipped lanterns, hand-lettered signs and place cards.

Crafting as the actual event

A craft afternoon a week before Halloween solves several problems at once. It fills a dark October afternoon, it produces the decoration for the house at no cost, and for children who find the evening itself overwhelming it provides a way to take part that is entirely comfortable.

Set out one table with all the materials, offer two or three projects rather than ten, and put a pot of pumpkin soup or a tray of muffins in the middle of it. That combination is, for a lot of Austrian families, the better half of Halloween.