Halloween can be among the most wasteful holidays if you only buy store-bought, disposable decorations, but it doesn’t have to be. One surefire way to lower your Halloween eco-footprint is to make your own reusable decorations. In this easy tutorial, we’ll show you how to make super-spooky homemade window silhouettes: all you need to create them is a roll of recycled paper and some eco-friendly paint. And the best part? When Halloween is over, you can roll them up and use ’em again next year!
What You’ll Need:
- Roll of recycled paper
- Eco-friendly black paint
- Pencil
- Paintbrushes
Step 1: Measure and Cut the Paper
Measure each of the windows that you will be creating silhouettes for and cut paper to size: the paper should cover each pane of glass completely.
Step 2: Pick a Spooky Scene, or Trace Your Child
There are many great options available for spooky scenes—ghosts, witches, bats, etc. Get your kids involved if you’d like humanoid-shaped creepy silhouettes: just have them lie down on the paper and strike a pose so you can trace them.
Step 3: Create the Silhouette
If you’re tracing your kid, be sure to go over the edges a couple of times so it’s a really solid tracing. Alternatively, you can also just draw an image on the paper, or use a projector to beam a shape for you to outline.
Step 4: Paint Inside the Lines
Paint your shape(s) black, using eco-friendly black paint and paintbrushes.
Step 5: Let It Dry, Then Hang it Up
Let the window silhouette completely dry and then hang it up on any window in your home, turn on a light behind the silhouette for a huge Halloween impact.
These window decalsreally are super-easy to make, and if you’re careful with them, you can use them again next year! Just roll the decals gently and store them in paper tubes where they won’t get crumpled. Next Halloween, you can pull them out and get them up on the windows again.
