Eat, craft and be scary

Monster jar lanterns.

Make your own Halloween treats to spook your friends.

Happy Halloween. My wonderful crew of crafting kids has helped me put this shoot together and come up with some wacky ideas for a really spooky Halloween.

We've been crafting with recyclables, balloons, bananas and lots more besides.

Only friendly ghosts and goblins are welcome at our crafting sessions and ghost races and our greatest wish is for you to make some of our wacky wonders for this special scary day. Come on! We dare you to have fun and a Happy Halloween.

Halloween (Bat) tiaras

Now for a bit of Halloween high glamour - Bat tiaras! Our batty crafters loved putting their headpieces together and we think they look beautiful.

Headband
Black cardboard
Silver wire - we used utility tie wire which worked well and was easy to use
Black satin ribbon
Black flowers - we picked up a few black leis from Look Sharp
Sticky tape
Glue gun/glue
Scissors

1 Begin by cutting small bat shapes - we used about four for every tiara. Maybe have an adult draw the first shape making it simple for the kids to copy.

2 Cut the wire into suitable lengths and secure to the headband by wrapping them around it a few times. Then attach a bat to each end of each wire with sticky tape.

3 Wrap black ribbon around the headband to cover it and the wire. Secure with the glue gun, a blob of glue at each end of the ribbon will do the trick.

4 Pick a few flowers and stick them on the top of your headband. If you have any little sparkly things you could put little sparkles in the centre of the flowers, or just leave the centres black. Voila! You have your own batty headpiece.

Skull candy jars

Need somewhere to put your Halloween stash? We're having fun with jars and turning them into spooky skull jars to keep our lollies in - yum.

Jars
A skull smaller than your lid - or any spooky ornament you would like to add
Black paint
Paint brush
Superglue

1 Glue the skull to the lid and leave to dry.

2 Paint the lid and skull black - we used spray paint but you could use acrylic.

3 Paint the top of the jar by pressing the brush on to the outside rim and leaving the paint to drip slowly down the side. Leave in the sun to speed up drying. Our skulls dried over a couple of days.

4 Finally, screw the lid back on the jar, fill with lollies and you're done.

Monster Jar Lanterns

How much fun have we had with our recycling? A lot, I can tell you. This is a nice night light for decoration either inside or out.

Jars - small to medium
Bandages, toilet paper or streamers
Big googly eyes
PVA
Scissors
Battery operated tea-light candles

1 Wrap your bandage around the jar and secure with PVA or a glue gun.

2 Glue your googly eyes to the jar.

3 Pop a candle inside the jar when it's dry. Your Monster jar lantern is ready to spook.

Get your snack on

Crafting sure can build up an appetite so we made sure we had a snack to share - something healthy ahead of the lolly fest on October 31.

Picking Pumpkins

Mandarins
Celery

Peel your mandarins and cut little sprigs of celery to go on the top - done!

For more crafting ideas, check out funwithjane.co.nz