Creepy not costly: Halloween handcrafts you can scare up around the house

photo A woven contact shelf paper was cut to fit tall, cylindrical candles. After wrapping the candles, Jumper tied them with jute and inserted nandina sprigs for color. The candles' glow can be seen through the contact paper's mesh.
photo This black-and-white table runner was created by taping together copies of a photo Joe Jumper took of trees in his yard. Mini pumpkins are mixed with yarn-wrapped candles to add color to the tablescape. Jumper, owner of The Clay Pot, hollowed out some pumpkins and inserted foam to hold mums or succulents, a project kids will enjoy.

Halloween HackIf your kids slice and dice more out of the pumpkin than needed for its jack-o'-lantern face, use Krazy Glue for an instant fix. The adhesive is perfect for repairing pumpkins that lost too many chunks during the carving process. The glue binds pumpkin pieces back quickly, letting kids get back to finishing their masterpiece.Source: Krazy Glue

Kid FriendlyHere are 10 ideas that kids can help make. They're so cute, it's scary.• Pick a pumpkin for each family member, but don't carve them. Paint a large circle in black chalkboard paint onto each pumpkin. When dry, let kids draw a family member's face in white chalk on each black circle. Cluster the finished pumpkins on the front porch to welcome trick-or-treaters.• Personalize pumpkins for family or friends by gluing on faux gemstones, glasses, googly eyes and other craft-store items.• Make a pattern in the silhouette of a running mouse. Let kids trace the pattern on black construction paper, cut it out and tape mice along the baseboard of a room. Sure to cause double-takes from Halloween visitors. This silhouette idea will also work with larger, black cutouts attached to the front windows of your home, back-lit by interior lights.• Recycle glass wine or Perrier bottles into party ware. After washing and drying bottles, spray them in white paint to cover entire bottle. When dry, let kids draw ghost faces on them with black markers. Drop orange-striped drinking straws into their tops.• Search flea markets and yard sales for the old-fashioned orange plastic pumpkins with handles that kids use to trick-or-treat. Tie black ribbon to the handles and suspend them at varying levels from tree branches in the front yard.• Cut the top off a large pumpkin, clean out the seeds and fiber, then insert a large plastic bowl. The bowl can be filled with punch, soup, treats or anything else you want to serve.• Make bats from your egg cartons. Cut strips of three adjoining egg compartments and flip them over with the open side down. See the bat shape - a body and two wings? Cover each in black paint or black marker, glue on googly eyes. Punch a small hole in the top of the center compartment (bat body) and thread fishing wire or orange ribbon through it. Knot wire or ribbon's end to hold in place. Suspend bats from trees, the light fixture above the dining table, doorways, etc.• Obtain paint chips in shades of orange or yellow from any hardware or home supply store. Let kids cut triangles from paint chips. Turn triangle point-side down and the stripes should resemble candy corn. String several onto a length of ribbon or yarn for a candy garland.• Combine cardboard toilet paper rolls with glow sticks to make glowing eyes. Cut scary eye shapes into the cardboard roll, insert a glow stick and watch the eyes light up. Better yet, tie the rolls into shrubbery along the front walkway so the rolls are hidden, but trick-or-treaters see the glowing eyes watching them.• Recycle that strand of white lights you hung around the back yard last summer into glowing ghosts. Cover each light with a square of white fabric, tie white yarn beneath each light to create the ghost's head. Draw black eyes and mouth onto the fabric with a black Sharpie.

Americans spent $7 billion on costumes, candy and cobweb-inspired decorations last Halloween, according to the National Retail Federation. Forbes magazine - which declares Halloween the "fourth-most popular holiday" behind Christmas, Thanksgiving and Easter - projects the average consumer will spend $75 this year for costume, treats and decor.

But it shouldn't be a price tag that creeps you out on Halloween.

Halloween, and the fall season in general, is really the easiest time of year to decorate the home for little expense. Cluster three pumpkins of varying size and color on the front stoop, add some mums for color and - voila! - you're done. But if you want to carry seasonal decor further, it's easy to scare up some great ideas just by searching the back yard or storage drawer.

Joe Jumper, owner of The Clay Pot in North Chattanooga, created a one-of-a-kind tablescape with Xerox paper, pumpkins and a paint tarp.

"I took a photo of trees, ran copies in black-and-white, then Scotch taped them together on the back side to make the table runner," he says.

For a 6-foot-long table, it took 14 sheets of 8.5-by-11-inch paper to make a runner long enough. He used a white canvas paint tarp for the tablecloth and cut dinner napkins from another tarp. Mini pumpkins and ombre-shaded, yarn-wrapped candles were intermingled the length of the runner. Jumper chose tall, cylindrical candles, but he says any size will work.

Start the yarn at the bottom of the candle, attaching the end with a dollop of glue. Then tightly wind the candle with yarn in fall colors. When ready to change yarn colors, simply attach the new shade of yarn with a tiny knot and continue winding.

A variation of this paint tarp-topped table featured two 4-foot birch limbs laid parallel in place of a runner. An assortment of orange, white and striped pumpkins balanced on top of the tree limbs.

"We used birch, but this would work with any wood," Jumper says. "We carved some of the pumpkins out and planted succulents in them. We put a block of oasis (foam) inside the pumpkin, inserted the mum and hid the oasis with moss."

He tied the canvas napkins with jute, then inserted nandina sprigs into the jute for a pop of color from the red berries.

Local craft and hobby store personnel say the trend of decorating in a natural look has translated into a boom in burlap sales.

"The biggest seller this season is burlap," says Michael Greenwell, general manager of Hobby Lobby on Gunbarrel Road. "The biggest thing going right now is combining burlap with blackboards. Burlap is used as a bow, border or garland on a blackboard."

Michelle Sowder, designer at Trees and Trends in Cleveland, Tenn., says "burlap is being used in every way you can imagine. We actually have burlap sunflowers and burlap leaves that people are using on grapevine wreaths."

Another popular Halloween decorating look is a pumpkin topiary, she says. Take three pumpkins of graduating sizes and stack them from the largest on the bottom to the smallest on top.

"Put them in an urn, attach a bow on top and let the streamers cascade down the sides," she describes. "You can also buy picks that have bats or berries attached that you can poke into the bow or between the pumpkins."

Contact Susan Pierce at spierce@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6284.

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