Halloween House DIY Window Silhouettes

 

…

It’s Halloween, and we celebrate big in our neighbourhood!  We live on a street where almost all the houses decorate weeks in advance, with elaborate graveyards and inflatables and spiders crawling on the roofs.  It’s intense, spooky, creepy, and awesome!  This year I took it up a notch with some DIY Halloween window silhouettes, we are the only house on the whole street who does this, it looks so good when the lights are on and the moon is out!

I have a goal that every year we will channel my inner Christine McConnell add a new DIY project to our Halloween décor.  I made the ghosts last year right after we moved in, aren’t they creepy?  I used this cheesecloth tutorial from Martha Stewart.  All I did was buy some plastic skulls from the dollar store and glued layers of tulle (left over from my wedding!) to them, being sure to press into the eye sockets.  Then I just took a screw and twisted it into the top to make a hanger and hung them with rope to tree branches and hooks.  They are really eerie looking, definitely not a cutesy ghost at all!

This year we made the scarecrow (we call him “No Noggin” after a little Curious George Halloween movie my kids love, “A Halloween Boo Fest”) using my Sigourney Weaver Alien flight suit costume and a plastic pumpkin head, filled with empty juice and milk jugs.  Super simple!  And then I made these silhouettes, and I have to say, they take things to another level!  Here’s how I did it:

DIY Halloween House Window Silhouettes

 

one: tape a garbage bag or bags to the entire surface of the window. It will stick to the glass naturally so it doesn’t take too much tape.

two: find an image that you want to copy. I did Pinterest and Google Image searches for “Halloween silhouette” to get all my ideas. Or copy mine, I don’t mind!

three: use a pen and draw out your silhouette. Seriously, that’s all I did, no patterns or tricks, just draw something. If you’re not a great artist, don’t worry, just pick an easy silhouette–try a ghost or a pumpkin or something simple!

four: cut out your design.  You can even glide the scissors across the bag and you’ll get a really smooth cut.

four: re-tape your garbage bags if necessary, so that they are stuck firmly to the window and there are no gaps between bags for light to shine through.

five: tape paper behind the garbage bags so that someone looking into your house doesn’t see anything through the window. This makes the silhouette really pop. If you don’t have a piece of paper large enough to cover the entire window (I used kids art easel paper) you’ll have to overlap. Try to make the overlapped part as thin as possible because it is visible with the lights on. Next year I may try a coloured plastic table cloth instead of paper, so check back in a year and I’ll let you know if it worked!

That’s it, super easy!  And reusable. Just take them down from your window carefully, roll them up, and store them somewhere they won’t get creased. 

 

I will decorate inside on October 31^st when we have a party for everyone coming to help with the trick-or-treaters–I bought enough candy for 2,000, hopefully that’s enough (last year was 1,200)!  I’ll post pics of the décor on Instagram, follow me here!

Happy Halloween, friends!

…