You don’t need to buy a bunch of disposable plastic junk to decorate your entire house for Halloween! Create your own reusable, recycled eco-friendly Halloween decorations with these 13 easy and fun tutorials. Spooky milk bottle lights, pumpkin garlands made of paper towel tubes, scrap wood tombstones and skull-face Easter eggs full of candy are among the items you can make using household items, recyclables and a few craft supplies.
Head in a Jar Illusion
(images via: madhaus, dabbled.org)
Print an image of a flattened face with a laser printer, stick it in a jar full of water and add some hair for effect, and you’ve got an eerily realistic, rather gruesome Halloween prop that costs next to nothing. Use a tall, narrow jar and roll up the paper when you insert it so that it unfurls close to the glass, giving it a three-dimensional look. Using a laser printer ensures that the ink won’t run when placed in water.
Vampire-Repelling Garlic Wreath
(images via: metrolic, gardenwise)
Ward off vampires with an odiferous warning that they’re not welcome at your door. Garlic that still has its dried greens can be braided onto a wreath as explained by Garden Wise Online, or you can hot-glue heads of garlic onto a wreath form.
Bottle Ghost Lights
(images via: fun in the making)
Turn single-serving milk bottles into adorably spooky decorations with nothing more than a string of lights, a hole puncher and some black paint. Check restaurants like Chik-fil-A for discarded bottles, wash them out well, punch holes in the sides of the neck, paint on your faces and then use scrap ribbon to tie the bottles to your light string.
Upcycled Tombstones
(images via: inhabitots)
Erect a makeshift graveyard using scrap wood for tombstones, instead of the environmentally harmful polystyrene normally used in commercial versions. Inhabitots has a tutorial that uses wood you may already have laying around in the garage as well as a saw, no-VOC paint, brushes, a hammer and nails.
X-Ray Lampshades & Votive Holders
(images via: fun in the making)
Got some old x-rays laying around? Here’s a novel use for them: placing them in front of a light as creepy, bone-themed decor. Fun in the Making explains how to cut them to fit lamp shades, votive candle holders and even night lights.
Recycled Book Pumpkin
(images via: creations by kara)
An old book is saved from the dumpster and transformed into a DIY Halloween decoration that’s perfect for any literature lover. Creations by Kara shows us how to cut it into a pumpkin shape, glue it, paint it and add a branch and ribbon.
Batty Branches
(images via: womans day)
Make an easy centerpiece tutorial much greener by using reclaimed materials. Follow the instructions offered by Women’s Day magazine, but select used styrofoam packaging instead of a floral oasis, and consider painting scrap cardboard black instead of using new paper.
Halloween Flower Pots
(images via: family fun)
Old, unwanted flower pots can be turned into reusable Halloween decor with a little orange and yellow paint. You could keep terra-cotta pots their natural color and add painted jack o’ lantern faces, or glue on the shapes using scrap paper.
Paper Towel Tube Pumpkin Garland
(images via: a glimpse inside)
A few slices of a cardboard paper towel roll are painted and glued into pumpkin shapes for a super-easy, cheap DIY fall garland, a decoration that could be left up through Thanksgiving.
Mummy Boxes
(images via: then she made)
An ideal craft project for kids, this tutorial uses empty cardboard cereal and cracker boxes and wraps them in strips of scrap white fabric. Use an old sheet or whatever you have on hand, wrap up your ‘mummies’ and add some goggly eyes.
Easter Egg Skulls
(images via: martha stewart)
Re-use your old plastic Easter eggs for Halloween! While Martha Stewart’s crafty version of this project involves specially purchased ‘egg boxes’, you can easily just paint the Easter eggs white, draw on the design with a black permanent marker and fill them with candy. Martha makes it easy to replicate her skull faces with a printable pattern.
Creepy Potato Stamps
(images via: martha stewart)
Did you know that potatoes make ideal all-natural DIY stamps? Use Martha Stewart’s skull template to carve a skull into a halved potato, dip it in paint and press it onto paper or any other surface you want to skullify.
Cutout Skull Tee
(images via: cut out and keep)
Need last-minute, Halloween-appropriate attire on a shoestring? Make your own skull face cut-out tee out of a shirt you already have in your closet. Cut Out and Keep offers a template that you simply print out, place under your shirt, trace and then cut.

