From BHG
Halloween Planters and Pumpkins
Simple steps and easy-to-find materials transform planters, lanterns, and pumpkins into a scary-fun Halloween doorstep arrangement. Adhere cat eyes (search online for copyright-free images) with crafts glue to urn planters or other pots. Tuck twigs, leaves, or flowers into sand or plastic foam-filled planters. Cut pieces of orange cardstock to fit lantern panels and tape jack-o'-lantern face pieces (cut from black cardstock) to the orange pieces. Place them behind the glass panels to protect from wind and rain. Add a few pumpkins and voila: Doorstep masterpiece accomplished!
Spooky Porch
With a little witchcraft you can set the stage for a spooky evening at your front door. Light a warm path to your door with luminaries and a lighted grapevine garland framing the doorway. Dangle a few faux bats and spiders near porch lights, Add black witch, cat, bat, and ghost silhouettes made of heavy paper to windows to increase the spooky ambiance.
Spider Welcome Mat
Skip the pricey holiday mats and make your own spider-theme welcome mat for just a few dollars. Start with a lightweight black mat cut into a circle. Hot-glue lengths of clothesline to the mat in a spiderweb pattern.
Spooky Spider Window Decoration
Add a Halloween-theme window covering to your front door to welcome the spooky season. Print two copies of our spider and web pattern, available below, onto white paper and enlarge to fit your window. Cut out the spider and web in two separate pieces to use as patterns. Trace the pattern pieces onto black construction paper, flipping the web pattern to use for the bottom of the window covering. Cut out the pieces, including the webbing indicated by the white within the web. Cut two rectangles from black construction paper to use as side pieces that join the top and bottom pieces, and cut yellow cellophane to fit inside the window. Tape the two web pieces, the two side pieces, and the spider to the cellophane, referring to the photo for placement. Tape the finished cellophane panel inside the window frame.
Stacked Pumpkin Message
If classic, not creepy, is your autumn decorating style, than use an elegant display of pumpkins to send a welcoming holiday message. Here, three pumpkins -- each one a bit smaller than the one below it -- rest on each other. Use a favorite font and stencil a message with spray paint or a paint pen. Trail some moss or other accent from the base of a tall planter or urn. If you stack the pumpkins away from a wall, insert a piece of rebar or a dowel from top to bottom to prevent toppling.
Doorstep Holiday Urn Display
Ever wondered what to do with those cute, inexpensive urns from the crafts store? With a simple coat of spray paint they become spooky Halloween decorations. Stuff cotton batting and blocks of crafts foam inside. Stick white branches into the foam as desired. Cut-out black bats, fabric leaves, black webbing, and a few creepy-crawly spider accents complete the look.
Personalized Faux Pumpkin
It's easy to transform foam pumpkins into one-of-a-kind accents for your outdoor Halloween decorating. Spray one pumpkin with glossy black paint and the other with matte black paint; cover a few pumpkins with discarded book pages. Cut a few additional book pages and silver crepe paper into leaf shapes for contrast. Group several pumpkins into an oversize cauldron or pot.
Gothic Address Plates
Set a spooky tone this season with decoupaged plates displayed by the front door. Use computer-printed house numbers embellished with copyright-free skeleton illustrations. Search for the art online under "human anatomy" or "anatomy."
Painted Halloween Pumpkins
Dress up your Halloween Porch with these easy-to-make painted pumpkins. Mask off the areas you want to remain unpainted, spray-paint the pumpkins black, and remove the tape to reveal your design. Draw the outlines of block letters onto your pumpkins and fill in with black crafts paint; add polka dots to your pumpkins by carefully drilling holes with a cupdrill bit. Make a black-and-white dotted pumpkin by applying black circle stickers to a white pumpkin. Use metal laundry tubs, barrels, or old chairs to give your fun pumpkin display varying height.
Black Hand Wreath
A purchased tinsel wreath is only part of the door display in this eerie idea. Adhere fake purple nails to a jewelry-display hand form (found at hobby stores), and mount it in the center of your wreath. The hanging sign, available below, makes a creepy note to hang from outstretched fingers.
Monster Eyes Halloween Wreath
This fuzzy orange wreath guarantees trick-or-treaters won't miss your front door. Wrap a wreath form with 1-3 orange feather boas, depending on how dense you want your results. Hot-glue googly eyes to pipe cleaners and use florist's pins to secure them to the wreath.
Scary Spider Wreath
A bag of inexpensive plastic spiders and a plastic foam wreath are all you need to create a creepy-crawly front door wreath. Simply paint a wreath shape black and hot-glue the spiders to the wreath. And make sure to save space in the center for the mother-of-all: a big arachnid.
Feathered Halloween Wreaths
Symmetry is a wonderfully simple decorating tool to guide you in creating a seasonally beautiful entryway -- at Halloween or any holiday time. Here, two black feather wreaths, accented with long lengths of shimmery silver ribbon, dress up the towering front doors. Whimsical -- and not-too-spooky -- faux ravens beckon their own sort of welcome.
Spider-Filled Front Yard
Embrace the spirit of Halloween in your front yard with this spider-filled bonanza. Secure a skeleton to the ground with rebar; use monofilament to pose the arms. Create a swarm of spiders with inexpensive plastic foam balls and chenille stems; secure to the ground with wired florist's picks.
Floating Head Hanging Ghosts
From Simply Designing
Amazing DIY Halloween Yard Decorations From
The Shadow Farm.
In our Style Challenge series, we ask some of our favorite bloggers from around the web to surprise us with their ideas for creating a stylish and functional space using Home Depot products as a starting point.
David Schilling pulls out all the stops every October to create the Shadow Farm, an amazing Halloween yard display in front of his home. In this Halloween Style Challenge, he shows us how he created some impressive DIY Halloween yard decorations with the Home Depot products we sent him. His simple decorating ideas will inspire you to take your own Halloween yard display to a new level.
Halloween has always been my favorite holiday. I remember being spooked as a kid by the cool jointed paper decorations my grandpa would hang in his house, along with the bright plastic lanterns he would put up in his windows. There has always been something magical about the season, with the burst of color in the leaves and the sapphire blue skies, the crisp mornings and early nightfall. Just thinking about it gives me goosebumps.
When asked to participate in The Home Depot’s Halloween Style Challenge, I was honored and immediately responded with an eager “YES!” I love decorating my yard for Halloween, and have become know as “the scary man” by the neighborhood kids. Out of context, that might not be a good thing, but as an homage to my haunted yard, I consider it a high honor. As I anxiously awaited the arrival of my box of secret goodies, I began to doubt myself. Our yard and house were in pretty bad shape; with overgrown flower beds, bare shrubs from an extreme trimming last fall, and fading paint on the trim.
After a trip to The Home Depot’s Lawn and Garden Department, things were looking up. I chose perennials that bloom in autumn colors, as well as some beautiful mums and and a new layer of cypress mulch. The addition of some resin edging fence also added a nice spooky touch to the front flower beds.
In past years, I have made many tombstones out of Styrofoam, and what respectable Halloween display would leave out the tombstones? To help freshen things up on the house itself, I chose Behr Interior/Exterior Alkyd Semi-Gloss Enamel paint in BMP Taupe (a nice warm deep brown) to paint the shutters and trim. It was amazing to see how much of a difference these few touches made with the appearance of the from yard. So with that under control, it was on to the mystery boxes.
I felt like a kid at Christmas when two huge boxes arrived on my front patio; and I pulled out what seemed like an entire pumpkin patch!
Eight beautiful foam pumpkins were sent, along with a load of plastic skull lights and orange mini-lights. So here was my start: pumpkins; lots of pumpkins.
My heart sank.
Strangely enough, carving pumpkins is something that my family very rarely does since our Halloween display is up for the entire month of October. I lined the foam pumpkins up in my living room, and for several days they mocked my with their uniform appearance. I had to come up with some sort of idea other than just carving a jack-o-lantern. And then it hit me…Lanterns! Actual lanterns made from pumpkins.
Making the Pumpkin Lanterns
It was a pretty basic idea, but certainly workable.
I purchased two separate Gilbert and Bennett Forged Shepherds Hooks and enough Crown Bolt plastic chain to hang three pumpkins. The chain itself was white, so I purchased a few cans of Rust-Oleum flat black and red primer spray paint.
As I sprayed the chain, I sprinkled it with some sand to add a rusty texture. In order to get a good looking rust appearance, I alternated between the red primer and flat black.
Dividing the pumpkins into quarters, I carved a scene of two sides and then wrapped the pumpkins with the chain. I then hung the chained pumpkins on the shepherds hooks, and lit them with skull lights and simple white mini-lights. A small section of real grapevine with dead leaves added the finishing touch to The Shadow Farm’s new gateway lantern.
Making the Halloween Scarecrow
The next project was to make a large, eye-grabbing character to oversee the Shadow Farm graveyard. I decided a great addition would be a scarecrow.
Again, the pristine condition of the foam pumpkin challenged me. The style I have developed over many years has a very organic feel to it, with absolutely no emphasis on uniformity. The only way for me to transform a foam pumpkin into a true Shadow Farm resident was to go way outside the shape of the original pumpkin. It has been a while since I have papier-mâché’d a large project, but the process came back to me me and there was no stopping.
The basic steps involved building out a basic form, bulking it up with wadded newspaper and tape, and then coating with papier-mâché strips. Papier-mâché clay made with cellulose insulation was then added for texture, and a final coat of air dry clay.
You will also notice that a much larger stem was added, to give my new scarecrow a sense of true size and power.
On to painting. I chose Behr Premium Plus Ultra in Starling Orange as a base color. Starting with a wash of black acrylic paint, I then thinned down the Behr Premium Plus Ultra with water as a main base coat. With this drying, it was time to build a body.
I wanted the body to look very natural and organic also, so went on a hunt for some appropriately sized dead limbs. A quick pruning of the large mulberry tree in my backyard provided just the right building material. Assembly was very easy, with all branched held tightly together with utility wire.
After the frame was placed in the front yard and anchored securely into the ground with metal stakes, I draped landscaping burlap over the shoulders. I added some dead grapevines and a bit of dyed cheesecloth. The head was lit with two strings of white lights, with the cord run up through the bottom of the head and hidden in the body.
Carving and Lighting the Rest of the Pumpkins
I then had four pumpkins left, and decided to help soften the nickname that has been given to me by the neighborhood kids. I took the remaining pumpkins to them, and asked for their help in my display by carving any face into them that they wanted so the first-ever Shadow Farm Scarecrow would have a cool pumpkin patch to look over. Their efforts turned out great, and seeing their eagerness to be a part of the effort was priceless. .
All of the pumpkins were lit with a strand of clear white lights, and the entire perimeter of the display was lit up with orange mini-lights.
Perhaps I may have taken a small step away from being “The Scary Man”, and a step toward being that cool guy that has a great Halloween display each year.
David Schilling has been “an avid yard haunter” for years, developing a love of all things odd, strange and macabre. His home in Indianapolis, Indiana is famous for its annual Halloween display, The Shadow Farm. You can see more of his unique and ghoulish art and Halloween decorations on his blog The Shadow Farm.
To style his yard for Halloween, David used the following products from The Home Depot:
- 22 inch Lighted Tombstone
- 10-Light Clear Skull and Pumpkin Set
- Foam carvable pumpkins
Courtesy of the Home Depot Blog
