Halloween Ghost Garland – Templates

My friend’s nonna (grandmother in Italian) came around the house the other day. She’s partly British decent, so we had a cup of tea instead of an espresso at 4 pm. Anyhow, over her cup of tea, she showed me the age-old craft of making paper garlands. ‘Perfect for Halloween’, I thought… and started dreaming of a Halloween Ghost Garland.

By now, everybody must know me as the crepe paper craft queen. However, today, I decided to use recycled copy paper instead of crepe paper, because I envision this craft to be perfect for Friday afternoon Halloween office parties, as well as for children crafts. And… recycling office paper makes this craft environmentally friendlier. The truth is: you can use either, with crepe paper being easier for kids to cut, and no gluing of sections being required.

Halloween Ghost Garland ~ Your Free Online Project Instructions

For this craft, all you need is a pencil, recycled paper of which one side is white, and a pair of scissors and Scotts tape.

The craft instructions are pretty straight forward:

1. Fold the paper length-wise

2. Cut into two long strips along the fold.

3. Fold each strips in four equal parts.

4. Make 4 to 8 pages worth of folded strips.

5. On the front of one of the folded packages, draw a ghost.

Garland Making Tip: Make sure that the ‘hands’ of the ghosts are right at the edge of your paper section, so that when unfolded, it will look like the ghosts hold hands.

Can’t draw? Print my free Halloween ghost template, cut it out and overlay it onto the paper. You may have to scale it to fit your exact paper. The good news is that ghost drawings are pretty ‘forgiving’ and free form. You can’t really make a mistake with them.

6. Cut all the packages following the template or your own drawing.

7. Use the Scotts tape to attach the ghost garland sections to each other.

8. With a black marker, paint on the two spooky eyes on each ghost.

Your garland is ready to be hung.

Tip: To make it hang properly and not ‘fall over’, you might want to give the ghost hands in the center of the garland a little folding squeeze.

BOOO!! Well, actually, these ghosts are rather friendly and cheery. As there are good spirits and bad spirits in the world, I guess we only want the good ones to join our Halloween Party. So, these little white spooks are invited!

This garland is of course also a perfect decoration for ‘Dia de los Muertos’, or the Day of the Death, which this year will be celebrated October 26-November 2, 2009, but most people celebrate it November 1.

More Halloween Garlands

If you want to create a whole bunch of garlands, here are some other ideas for you:

1. Use black crepe or tissue paper to create cats, bats or witches, and use orange paper for pumpkins. Use the instructions as above. The sections will be much larger, so you may not even have to tape any together.

2. No skulls will be found in my home (it’s bad Feng Shui) however the recycled white office paper would be good also for skull garlands. Or crepe paper.

4. For bats, cats and pumpkins you can probably find Cookie Cutters
to help you create your shapes, or you can simply draw them.

5. Consider keeping the design or the garland simple.

If you are not throwing a party, but simply want just a touch of Happy Halloween shimmer in your home, consider using the above techniques for a small garland, such as this. This one is made with just 1/2 a sheet of white paper, folded 4x.

I left it white, however, you could use glitter glue and/or a few markers to add a splash of color. (With this self-created ‘coloring page’, you actually have created a fun Halloween craft project for your kids.)

For more color, use recycled ocher yellow or orange paper and add green curls of rag pipe cleaners, for a little bit more dash. Finish it off with drawing in the black detail lines.

6. That’s all I can recommend, besides have fun. Enjoying the Holidays, is all about the process, the time in between, so have fun crafting. HAPPY HALLOWEEN.