Paper Halloween

Hey hey! Hope you are having a great week! I’m dragging today – between a late night car break down and a cold that came on super fast last night, I’m in a bit of a fog today. I apologize for any misspellings in this post ahead of time. :)

When it comes to Halloween decorating, I’m all about quick, easy and stuff that doesn’t take up valuable storage space. We put up most of our Halloween decor outside, and I don’t do a ton inside just because I always go through the fall/Halloween dilemma. Put up fall, take it down, do Halloween, put it back up after? Or put up fall, add some Halloween in here and there? The older I get the more I go for the latter. ;) Over the past few years I’ve come up with a solution that meets all of those criteria – the easy to store and cheap part especially. I love experimenting with different ways to use them too.

I’ve shown you a few of these ideas before – one of my favorites is using our lamp shades. What looks like this during the day:

Has a little surprise at night:

I just cut out the shapes years ago with my vinyl cutter – they have kept fine over the years. (I use a little bit of spray adhesive or just tape to put them on the inside of the shade.)

On most of our lamp shades you can’t see them unless you turn on the light, but some are lighter so you see them during the day too. I just think it’s such a fun little Halloween surprise:

Of course our infamous Martha Stewart mice usually go on the stairs:

We put them up this year too, but when I finished this next project I realized it was a bit much, so I took some down. I have a new spot in mind, we’ll see if I have time to pull that off before Halloween. ;)

Last year I showed you how I added a gaggle of bats on the wall:

Is it a group of bats a gaggle? Who knows. Sure. I’m tired people. ;)

Well, back then our walls were that pinkish hue and the paint was a flat sheen – so when I took down all of those bats the sticky stuff I used to hang them left a billion little dots on the wall. Niiiiiice.

The walls are eggshell now, so we probably won’t have that problem again, but I wasn’t taking any chances. This time I added them to the old windows I have hanging near the staircase instead and I LOVE how they look!

I just used that sticky gummy stuff again to put them right on the windows:

I bent up their wings to give them some dimension:

Last year I added some eyes to a few of them:

So fun!

They make a impact but didn’t cost much – well really anything:

I wanted to add more but tried to show some restraint.

I was planning on making some quick Halloweeny pillows for the settee but then the monster cold hit me last night and that wasn’t happening. Maybe I’ll get some whipped up this weekend. Or maybe I’ll just sleep. :)

Our skeleton friend hangs out to greet our visitors:

He’s just chillin’. Feet crossed. He should really close that mouth though. So rude. :)

He doesn't show up great so I may spray him with some sparkly silver spray paint to brighten him up a bit.

I love using paper for Halloween decorations – it’s cheap and takes up hardly any storage space – you can’t beat it! If you have a Silhouette or similar vinyl cutting machine it takes no time at all to create these. If you don’t, you can usually find them at craft stores and I found a TON of different options at the Dollar Tree last fall and this fall.

There are also printable options online – I found a great resource here with a bunch of Halloween images you can print and cut out on your own.

What’s your go-to Halloween decor? Does your family get into the really spooky stuff or does it stay cute and lighthearted?