DIY Halloween Decorations for Halloween Parties

Hosting a Halloween party can be a great way to celebrate the spooky season and create lasting memories with your friends and loved ones. For a successful party, choose great Halloween decorations that create a spooktacular atmosphere. This starts with selecting a Halloween party theme and decorating your space accordingly.

Whether it’s a classic haunted house theme, a specific Halloween movie, or a costume party, make sure the decorations create a festive and eerie atmosphere. Here are some tips and ideas to help you plan and organize a fantastic Halloween party.

DIY Halloween Party Invitations

Start by sending out creative and themed invitations to your guests. You can use spooky graphics or playfully worded invitations to set the tone for the party. These can easily be made in Word or Pages by uploading images to decorate your party invite. Or you can use the free version of Canva, which is packed with free templates.

For the ultimate party invites, make custom candy bar party invites on sticker paper with all the details printed onto the wrapper. Guests will always remember a party invite that comes in a candy bar. It’s like receiving a golden ticket full of joy and promises, and you also get to eat the candy.

DIY Outdoor Halloween Decorations

Make a Spooky Porch Sign

Use a reclaimed wood plank, or grab a sample of laminate flooring plank for the DIY store and cut out a spooky welcome sign. You can cut the letters by hand or vinyl with a Cricut Maker. Have fun with your message; choose funky Halloween-themed letters and personalize them, or put a spooky message. Ideas for messages for porch signs include:

1. Enter if you dare
2. Witches ball this way
3. Road to nowhere
4. Welcome the end
5. Hey boo
6. Monster bash this way

Hang a Halloween Wreath on The Front Door

Make and hang a custom Halloween door wreath; this is super easy to create with some black and orange organza or netting, plastic spiders, and a glue gun.

Use a coat hanger as the base, form a circle shape, and tie strips of netting to create the wreath, working around the coat hanger until it’s complete. The net strips can be as long as you want them to be. The bigger and more effective, the better.

Now, attach spiders and glow sticks for a spooky feel. It’s also a great Halloween craft to get the kids involved and let them create.

Decorate The Front Porch With Broomsticks and Cobwebs

Pop brooms on the porch and hang a curtain or spider webs for your guests to battle through.

Light up the porch with battery candles or tea lights inside pumpkins for safe but effective jack-o’-lanterns to welcome party guests. Avoid using wax candles; battery tea lights are a much safer option, especially if guests wear capes and costumes.

If you have a rocker on the porch, this is the perfect place to put a skeleton wearing a witch hat to welcome party guests and pop a message around its neck with a spooky warning.

Create Ghostly Decorations for Halloween by Hanging Ghosts in The Window

To create the easiest floating ghosts, put some lightweight white fabric over helium balloons, use black vinyl to cut out ghostly faces with a Cricut Joy, and anchor them in front of windows to say a spooky hello to passers-by and trick-and-treaters.

If you put the balloons in dark, empty rooms, pop balloon lights into the balloons to create a ghostly glow for your ghosts.

Another idea is to create your ghosts out of papier mache. To create a paper mache ghost:

1. Inflate a balloon to form the head
2. Apply layers of paper mache (paper and PVA glue) over the balloon and allow it to dry
3. Shape the dried base and drape white tissue or crepe paper to give it a ghostly appearance
4. Add eyes for a spooky effect

These can be attached from curtain poles on a clear acrylic string to make the ghosts appear to float.

Project Images Onto the Front of the House

For the ultimate DIY Halloween decorations, use an outdoor projector to project images onto the front of the house. It will have all the neighbors and party guests discussing the party for weeks.

Whether it’s a spooky castle with flying bats, ghosts, or spiders running all over the house, this is a simple but effective way to transform a home, make it stand out on Halloween, and have trick-or-treaters flocking to the door. Be sure to have big piles of candy ready for the crowds, who will undoubtedly want to knock and say hello.

Make Indoor Decorations for Halloween

Easy DIY Halloween decorations can be very effective and not break the bank. Fortunately, there are many incredible craft websites for free SVG Files and printables for Cricut and Silhouette to help you make your spooky DIY projects with step-by-step tutorial guides to help you create Halloween craft projects on a budget.

From Halloween art to frame and put on the walls to stickers for party bags, many free files are available to create incredible party decorations for Halloween.

Create Custom Banners for Easy Decorations for Halloween

Garlands and banners are easy to download and print off. Print and cut out each flag, and use a hole punch to create holes to string happy Halloween banners for gruesome messages for party guests.

Hang Spiderwebs Everywhere

And even better, use a dry ice machine and clever floor spotlights to project ghostly cobwebs onto the walls and furniture. This is the perfect way to create a Halloween atmosphere. However, don’t go overboard on the dry ice. You also want your guests to be able to see and get about the house safely.

Create a Spooky Table Centerpiece

Food and drink are a big deal at any Halloween party, and every party snack table needs a great centerpiece. Grab a selection of plastic skulls in different sizes from the bargain store and spray half with black spray paint and half with glow-in-the-dark yellow or green. Now arrange them on a tray with mason jars filled with battery candles, pebbles covered in spider webs, fake spiders, and jars of candy corn for guests to dig into.

Set Up or Hire a Halloween Photo Booth

No party is complete without a photo booth; you can hire one, save some bucks, and create your own. These are easy to set up in a corner with a basket of props for guests to get creative and make some party memories.

Ideas for Photo Booth Props

1. Witches hats and capes
2. Witch and Wizard wigs and glasses
3. Broomsticks
4. Bandages to wrap up like mummies
5. Devil horns

Serve Themed Food and Drink for Halloween Parties

Consider making spooky treats to fit into the party theme. Halloween is a time of year to go mad and have fun with themes, so be creative and fun and go for it. A few ideas for spooky food include:

1. Witches’ fingers: pretzel sticks or chocolate fingers with almond nails
2. Eyeball punch: floating lychee fruits in red-colored punch
3. Decorate ghostly glasses by adding vinyl eyes and serve white hot chocolate inside
4. Zombie sausage rolls: wrap pastry strips around sausages in a criss-cross pattern, leaving parts of the sausage visible so it resembles a mummy and pops on some edible eyes
5. Spider cupcakes: decorate cupcakes with edible eyes and licorice laces for legs
6. Babybell spiders with edible eyes and cheese string legs

Alternatively, go for easy-to-make party fare and serve canapes on arrival, followed by a sweet and sour charcuterie table; the bigger, the better. And if you can bake, make a huge spider-shaped loaf for the centerpiece filled with steaming hot baked camembert.

Also, offer some hearty dishes to fill guests up, such as a cauldron pot bubbling away filled with delicious chili to warm party guests.

Have a Halloween Movie Wall for Interactive Decorations

If you use a movie theme, set up a projector and project the movie onto a wall. Keep the film on silent; you want to create an atmosphere. Have the images playing but maintain the party atmosphere and keep the Halloween music playing.

It’s essential to choose well-known movies, something fun and non-scary if there are kiddies at the party. Some great ideas for family Halloween movies are:

1. Hocus Pocus (1993 and 2022) – Three witches resurrected on Halloween night in Salem, Massachusetts, wreak havoc on the town. It’s up to a group of kids to stop them.
2. Casper (1995) – A friendly ghost named Casper befriends a young girl and her father, and together, they try to uncover the secrets of an old mansion.
3. Hotel Transylvania series (2012-2021) – Count Dracula operates a hotel for monsters, but things get complicated when a human stumbles upon the establishment.
4. Corpse Bride (2005) – An animated Tim Burton film where a young man accidentally proposes to a deceased bride while rehearsing his wedding vows.
5. The Addams Family (1991) – This live-action adaptation follows the eccentric and creepy Addams family as they deal with a conniving con artist trying to steal their fortune.
6. Harry Potter (2002-2011) – Based on the “Harry Potter” book series by J.K. Rowling, it follows the adventures of the young wizard Harry Potter and his friends at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Create Super Cool Party Treat Bags

Create cool treat bags for guests to take home after the party. These can be split into adult and children-themed bags.

Create some fun activities for the kiddies so they can take them home as part of their party bag. Fill the party bags with Halloween candy and treats.

For the adults, use miniature-themed spirits or liqueurs, like pumpkin spice vodka, apple-flavored whiskey, or a Halloween-inspired cocktail mix. Additionally, provide spooky shot glasses decorated with Halloween motifs or monograms, allowing guests to use them during the event and keep them as souvenirs afterward.

Mission Completed: You Have Created a Halloween Party To Remember

Whether you want to splash the cash or create a Halloween party on a budget, Halloween is all about having fun and going all out on decor—the bigger and bolder, the better. It’s all about creating memories and celebrations with friends and family.

And as a final thought, if you like to have a new theme every year. Set up a Halloween chat with friends and do a yearly theme swap. This way, you can swap decorations and save money while having an exciting new theme year after year.

This article originally appeared on Wealth of Geeks. 

Sarah Christie

Sarah Christie

Sarah Christie is a craft, food, cruise, and family travel writer at Extraordinary Chaos, Cruising For All and Mini Travellers. Plus co host of the Magically Cruising Podcast. Known for her unique perspective and ability to find beauty in chaos, Sarah designs and creates craft projects as well as creating recipes for people who want to cook from scratch the easy way. Whilst also exploring family travel and how to navigate it.