Looking for a last minute Halloween craft? We made these glue ghosts and they were easy and frightfully fantastic!
It’s no shocker that many (most?) of the “easy” crafts for kids online are, well, not exactly easy and not made for a tiny NYC apartment kitchen. We’ve had our fair share of failed craft experiments (we are a food blog after all!) but good news….this one worked and all the tools can be found at your local dollar store.
What You Need:
- Scissors
- Cheesecloth
- Black felt (or something else for the eyes….we used a sharpie)
- Balloons
- Tin Cans (or any bottle you have around the house – we used cooking oil and soup cans)
- Wax paper (or something to cover your table)
- White craft glue (we used Elmer’s)
- Water
- Painter’s tape
- Patience (yup, these suckers need to dry)
Steps:
- Blow up three balloons. One for the head and two smaller ones for the arms.
- Tape the big balloon onto the top of a tall bottle. We used cooking oil. This will be the head.
- Tape the smaller balloons onto two small cans. We used baby corn. These will be the arms.
- Place the small balloon cans on each side of the taller bottle – this is the ghost skeleton.
- Put some newspaper, wax paper or whatever on your table because this is about to get messy.
- Now the fun part. Pour entire bottle of glue into a large bowl and add about 1/2 to 3/4 cup of water. Stir it around.
- Dip the cheesecloth in the bowl and saturate it with the glue/water mixture.
- Pull it out of the bowl, squeeze off the extra glue goop
- Lay the cheesecloth over your can/balloon contraption. It might take a few tries because the cheesecloth sticks to itself.
- Let it dry. Hint – the less goopy the cheesecloth, the quicker it will dry (re-read Step 8 folks)
- When the cheesecloth is dry (ours took about 2 hours), pop the balloon with something sharp, then gently peel it off the cheesecloth. The head may sink in when you do this, but after removing the balloon you can easily reshape it.
- Decorate and accessorize!
From one package of cheesecloth we were able to make three ghosts. One biggie and two babies.
Ready to start!?
Wall sticker decor courtesy of our interior designer Sunny
The messy (fun) part
Waiting game…..let it dry!
Draw the face
Accessorize like all New Yorkers know how to do!
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