DIY Halloween Calendars to Countdown to the Spookiest Day of the Year

Build up the Halloween hype with your very own DIY advent calendar. Here’s a few ideas to get you started.

Australia’s well into the Halloween madness and while it may look a bit different in 2020 due to the pandemic, there’s still ways to celebrate 31 October, even if it’s at home.

While advent calendars are normally associated with Christmas in anticipation of everybody’s favourite holiday of the year, carrying out the same countdown for Halloween has also weaved its way into our lives. To help give yours a spooky spin, we’ve rounded up four DIY countdown calendar ideas to get you excited.

Hang your Halloween countdown calendar

Use a large window, a bare wall or a bulletin board to hang numbered Halloween candy bags. You can put in a few treats for yourself, or your friends and family, and get a sweet surprise on the daily until it’s Halloween so you can finally go overboard with the sugar rush.

Buy Halloween party bags here.

Halloween paper chain countdown

Buy a wooden shaped pumpkin and paint it bright orange. Once it’s dried, use white paint to write Halloween Countdown. Get glitter cardstock paper and cut them into 31 one-inch wide strips and make rings as shown in the picture above. You can use number stickers for the countdown. Stick this to your wall or on a board. Each day, remove a ring until it’s trick or treat time.

[Via Oriental Trading]

Put your sewing skills to good use

This DIY idea only works if you’re willing to get into a very crafty project (and if you think Halloween is worth the effort). You can read all about what it takes to get your advent calendar looking like the picture above right here, but for a shortcut method, this is what you could get away with doing instead:

• Get a fun-coloured fabric printed out with a design of your choosing.
• Send appropriately sized Halloween-friendly images to a different coloured fabric — perhaps nine or 10 to a piece —cut these up in squares and stitch them into pockets.
• Separately sew on the numbers as shown above or use numbered stickers or buttons if you want to keep it easy.
• Places candies inside each pocket.
• Give yourself a teeny tiny treat until your sweet tooth is ready to take on one of the biggest candy-filled days of the year.

Easy does it with this DIY countdown calendar

If the ideas above seem like too much work, here’s an easy one for the lazy folks. This is what you’ll need:

• Buy a 17 x 23-inch bulletin board
• Straight pins or push pins
• Card stock
• Printer
• Scissors
• Halloween/washi tape or something similar to cover the board’s frame

How to make it

1. Download the calendars cards (as shown in the image above).
2. Print pages 3-8 on your card stock (fun fact sides).
3. Insert the pages back into the printer and print pages 9-14 (calendar sides of the card).
4. Print page 15 for an optional Happy Halloween card for the middle of your board.
5. Dress up your board. For in-depth details, visit Spooky Little Halloween.