Is your front verandah looking a little blah heading into spooky season? Are your kids are begging you to do more decorations than last year? If you want to trick out your entryway but aren’t super crafty and don’t want to spend a fortune, here are a few easy ways to deck out your door or make your front verandah more festive (if not exactly inviting).
Recreate the corn maze feel
Is any October complete without a trip to the pumpkin patch, replete with corn maze, hay ride, and apple cider doughnuts? Take inspiration from the corn maze and bedazzle your front steps with a variety of autumnal items sitting atop hay bales (which create a variety of heights on which you can decorate). Use fall-coloured mums in apple baskets, surrounded by pumpkins, corn stalks or a scarecrow for a fantastical fall feel.
Make a candy wreath
One way to not eat all the candy? Use it to make colourful wreaths for your front door. First, assemble an assortment of old-fashioned candies in Halloween colours, like Mary Janes, Bit-O-Honey, Rolos, Werther’s Original, Tootsie Rolls, Caramel Creams, and Brach’s hard candies. Wrap a 16-inch styrofoam wreath form in white ribbon and attach the candies in an overlapping pattern with a hot glue gun. Finish by attaching a yellow, magenta, or orange bow to the bottom of the wreath.
(Pictured above is a similar, but more time-consuming version that requires tying and curling orange, black, and white ribbons around a wire circle, or a stretched out coat hanger, then tying individual pieces of candy to the ribbons to be cut off later by trick-or treaters.)
Mummify your front door
Make your entryway eerie with white streamers, poster board, and tape. Starting from the bottom, wrap a few rolls of white streamers (or toilet paper) around your front door and leave a space open near the top for the eyes. Tape black poster board in the opening, cut out two round white eyes, and fill them with small black pupils. With the delicate materials you’re using, you’ll want to save this one until closer to Halloween (or wrap it in plastic wrap once you’re done, so it doesn’t get ruined by the elements).
Alternately, you could wrap an interior door with the same materials.
Welcome a bat invasion
If you trust your own precision, cut out a series of bats using black poster board (or buy paper bats at your local crafting store). Stick a double-sided Command strip on the back of each bat and attach them on or near your door in the “flight pattern” of your choice. You’ll almost be able to hear them flapping off into the night.
Cover the door in “spiderwebs”
With nothing more than a roll of blue painter’s tape and some construction paper, you can cover your door in a giant spiderweb. Cut the tape into varying lengths and, beginning with long pieces fanning out from the centre, snip shorter pieces to connect the longer main tendrils. Don’t worry about making it perfect, just connect the pieces in a pattern resembling that of a web, add some large white eyes, with a pupil colour of your choice and even a fake spider to complete the look.
Make a Jack Skellington door
Take a tip from the Pumpkin King of Halloween Town in this nod to Tim Burton’s classic film, The Nightmare Before Christmas. All you need is black construction paper, black electrical tape, scissors and the printable template of your choice (a quick Google search yields dozens of options). Note: The eyes will need to be bigger and more spookily slanted than pictured here to achieve the full effect.
Embrace the graveyard scene
Create a creepy graveyard scene with scattered skulls and bones, hanging skeletons, and fake rats. Add some tombstones, “R.I.P” and “Enter if You Dare” metal lawn signs, a light-up talking ghoul, some frightening flickering pathway markers, and perhaps even a faux cemetery fence. You’ll be chilling the spines of your neighbours in no time.
Craft a message from beyond
Another idea from Monica Mangin of East Coast Creative involves red paint, plastic wrap, a paint brush and your hands — that’s it. After wrapping your front door completely in plastic wrap, use red paint to write a warning of your choice (“Enter at Your Own Risk,” “No One Leaves,” and “Keep Out: Zombie Zone” are a few alternatives to what’s pictured above). Add some ominous handprints, let it dry, wrap one more layer of plastic over the top to keep the paint intact, and enjoy your newfound status as one of the spookiest houses on the block.
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