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30 days of creepy crafts! Grab DIY ideas inspired by "The Spindlers"

Calling all creepy crafting queens!
We asked GL girls to get inspired by The Spindlers from Lauren Oliver, then share their Halloween craft ideas. Now it's your turn to get inspired! We've got 30 days of creepy crafts below—and you can make 'em all for spooky surprises this entire season. Click on a craft to jump to the DIY instructions, or scroll down to browse.

Deets on The Spindlers
Liza trips—and it’s a long way down to the dark and dripping depths of Below, an eerie underworld beneath our own. Can she rescue her brother’s soul—and make it back with her own intact? CLICK HERE to check out her spine-tingling story in The Spindlers by Lauren Oliver.
 




October 2: Creepy Crawly Dirty Cupcakes
 

Ingredients:
1 box of chocolate cupcake mix (and all the ingredients for it!), 1 can of chocolate frosting, 1 pack of crème filled cookies (like Oreos), 1 bag of gummy worms (or other gummy bugs), 1 fork, 3 bowls
 
  1. Bake cupcakes according to the box instructions.  You can make them a little bit bigger than they suggest. There will be less, since they are bigger (around 18 cupcakes instead of the 24 that the recipe called for). Make sure you bake them all the way through!
  2. While the cupcakes cool, make the filling.  Put about 15 cookies in a sandwich bag and crush them with a can or a rolling pin. Then, mix the crushed pieces with a few spoonfuls of frosting (about 5 heaping spoonfuls).
  3. Use a bread knife to cut the tops off of the cupcakes. Save them on the side. Using a fork, scrape out some of the inside of the cupcake onto a plate. 
  4. Fill the hole in the cupcake with the frosting-cookie mixture.
  5. Frost the cupcake top and place it back on top of the cupcake, so the filling is hidden.
  6. Mix 4-5 more crushed cookies in with scraped out cupcake insides and sprinkle it on top to look like dirt. 
  7. Top with a gummy bug and gross out your friends at your Halloween bash with these “dirt” cupcakes.  

October 3:  Black Cat Pillows
 
Materials:
Hand sewing needles, black thread, 1/2 inch black or pink button, black pillow, 2 1/2 inch crystal buttons, white embroidery floss

  1. Thread a long needle with black thread; sew the 1/2 inch button to the center of the pillow, stitching all the way through & pulling thread tight, forming cats nose.
  2. Sew crystal buttons above nose to make eyes.
  3. Thread an embroidery needle with 2 strands of floss. To make whiskers, make a small stitch on one side of nose; tie thread ends together & trim to about 2 inches long. Make several more whiskers on each side of nose in this way.

October 4: Chevron Glitter Pumpkin
 
 
Materials:
Pumpkin (real or fake), paint (any color), paint brush, painter’s tape, glitter, glue

  1. Paint your pumpkin any color of your choice and let dry.
  2. Use the painter’s tape to tape around the pumpkin in a zigzag line. Do this multiple times to achieve the chevron pattern.
  3. Where you see pumpkin, paint on glue.
  4. Add glitter on top of the glue and let dry.
  5. Shake off excess glitter and peel off the tape to reveal your chevron pumpkin!

October 5: Mummy Pumpkin
 
Materials:
Pumpkin (real or fake), white gauze tape, 2 big googly eyes, pumpkin carving knife, glue

  1. Take carving knife and cut out a small mouth.
  2. Wrap gauze tape around the pumpkin, avoiding the mouth.
  3. Use glue to secure tape.
  4. Glue on googly eyes.
  5. Wrap around more gauze tape so that eyes appear to be peeking out.

October 6: Creepy Peeper Claws
Materials:
Black nail polish, white nail polish, clear top coat, toothpick

  1. Paint your nails with two coats of black nail polish (optional: as a base coat you can paint your nails nude before applying the black).
  2. Take white nail polish and create dots on each nail.
  3. After the dots dry, take the end of a toothpick and use the black polish to add a smaller dot in the center of each white dot. This makes them look like creepy peepers!
  4. Once nails have dried, apply a clear top polish to prevent chipping.
 
October 7: Ghost Cookies

Ingredients:
Can of vanilla icing, chocolate chips, Nutter Butter cookies

  1. Dip Nutter Butters in vanilla icing
  2. Place two chocolate chips on the cookie to act as eyes. You can use tweezers for this to keep the icing from smudging.
  3. Place in refrigerator for 30 minutes to set icing, then serve.
 
October 8: Chalkboard Pumpkin

Materials:
Newspaper, a pumpkin (real or fake), chalk (any color you choose), chalkboard paint (black), paintbrush

  1. Spread out newspaper somewhere outside so you don’t get the paint anywhere.
  2. Clean off your pumpkin to make sure it doesn’t have any dirt on it and dry it well.
  3. Paint on the black chalk paint covering the whole entire pumpkin. It doesn’t have to be too thick.
  4. Let it dry for 24 hours.
  5. Decorate your pumpkin with chalk. You can even use glow-in-the-dark chalk to make it extra spooky!

October 9: Creepy Candy Carrier

Materials:
Plastic sand bucket, 2 big goggly eyes, athletic tape, glue

  1. Wrap athletic tape around bucket and glue in place.
  2. Glue on googly eyes and let dry.
  3. Collect your candy!

October 10: Candle Crawlers

Materials:
Mini pumpkin, tea light (you can get festive using pumpkin scented ones!), black pipe cleaners, pumpkin carving knife, glue, scissors

  1. Carve out the inside of the pumpkin.
  2. Cut pipe cleaners and bend so they look like spider legs.
  3. Glue pipe cleaners around pumpkin, or cut holes and push them in.
  4. Add tea light in the center of the pumpkin.


October 11: Wicked Wreath

Materials:
A Styrofoam wreath OR a wreath shape cut out of cardboard, a feather boa (you can use black, orange or purple), some small Halloween accessories (eye balls, little pumpkins, spiders, skeletons), a hot glue gun
   
  1. Start to wrap your feather boa around the whole entire wreath. Glue the end down, and glue the boa to the wreath every few inches. Do this until the whole wreath is covered and the boa is secured.
  2. Randomly glue the Halloween accessories to the wreath to make it scary!

October 12: Studded Pumpkins

Materials:
Fake or real pumpkins (fake used here), silver and gold spray paint, pearl push-pins, silver thumb-tacks (from Walmart)

  1. Spray paint your pumpkins. I did two with just silver and one with gold spray paint. I did two coats on each pumpkin.
  2. Allow your pumpkins to dry overnight.
  3. Decide how you would like to decorate your pumpkins with the accessories! For gold studkin #1, I carefully pushed in the pearl pins every inch down each groove all around the pumpkin. For silver studkin #2, I covered one whole section of the pumpkin with silver push-pins. For studkin #3, I made a star design around the stem and base of the pumpkin, sometimes connecting the points with a single line of studs.

October 13: Creepy Peeper Bangles

 Materials:
Googly eyes in all different sizes (from any craft store), some inexpensive bangles (try Claire's, Forever 21 or a thrift shop), hot glue gun

  1. Using the hot glue gun, glue the googly eyes onto the bangle, starting at one end and working your way to the other (this will help you make sure they all fit).
  2. Allow the glue to dry completely until it is cool before you wear your creepy craft!

October 14: Vampire Pumpkin

Materials:
A little pumpkin, a set of vampire fangs, 2 red push-pins (you can use anything really, like thumbtacks!), spoon, carving knife, ruler or tape measure

  1. Measure the vampire fangs with your ruler, then mark this same length onto your pumpkin where his mouth will go. Make your markings about two centimeters longer than the vampire fangs.
  2. Cut the rectangle out of the side of the pumpkin. You will insert the vampire fangs through this whole, so it should be a tiny bit longer than the fangs are.
  3. Remove the insides from the pumpkin with your spoon.
  4. Insert the vampire teeth into your pumpkin.
  5. Push in the push-pins where you would like his eyes to go.
  6. Note: You can paint your pumpkin before you do this if you want a colorful vampire. Let it completely dry before you start carving!
 
October 15: Glitter Spider Webs

 
Materials:
Wax paper, Elmer’s glue (refrigerated for several hours), glitter, spatula
 
  1. On a sheet of wax paper, draw your spider web with Elmer’s glue. It can be any size or shape that you want.
  2. Sprinkle your web with glitter and let it sit overnight.
  3. Set your web down in a safe place to let it dry completely. The next day, shake the extra glitter off. The drying process can take up to 2 days, so be patient!
  4. Once your glitter web is completely dried and the glue is hard, use a spatula to carefully and gently separate the web from the wax paper.

October 16: Halloween Spider Cookies
 

Ingredients:
45 pretzel sticks, 1 cup peanut butter, 30 mini Reece's Pieces

  1. Place chocolate chips and shortening in microwave on high in 30 second intervals, stirring in between, until chocolate is smoothly melted.
  2. Dip one side of 15 of the crackers in the chocolate. 
  3. Place the cracker (chocolate side up) on wax paper to dry. 
  4. Break the pretzel sticks in half, and dip the unbroken end of each one in the chocolate.  Place on wax paper to dry. 
  5. Take the 30 mini Reece's Pieces, and using a toothpick place a dot of melted chocolate in the center to make the eyes. Allow to dry.
  6. When the dipped crackers and pretzels are dry, take one of the 15 remaining undipped crackers, and spread with peanut butter. 
  7. Take 6 of the dipped pretzel sticks, and place 3 on each side of the cracker, to make the legs. 
  8. Take one of the dipped crackers, and smear a little more peanut butter on the undipped side, place peanut butter side down on the other cracker to make the spider. 
  9. Take two of the mini Reece's Pieces eyes, and put a small dot of melted chocolate on the back.
  10. Place the eyes on the chocolate cracker to complete the spider.
  11. Place your pretzel spiders in the refrigerator to set.

October 17: Spooky Black Cat

Materials:
1 paper plate, 1 piece of black construction paper, black paint, pink pom pom, 3 black pipe cleaners, 2 googly eyes, glue, scissors

  1. Cut your paper plate into the shape of a crescent moon. From the leftover plate piece, cut a smaller crescent moon shape.
  2. Paint both of the crescent moon shaped-plates with black paint.
  3. While the paint is drying, use scissors to cut the shape of a cat head out of the construction paper. Think a circle head with two triangle ears!
  4. Glue your two googly eyes and pom pom down to make up the cat’s eyes and nose.
  5. Cut each pipe cleaner in half.
  6. Attach three pipe cleaner pieces to each side of the cat’s face for the whiskers.
  7. When the paint dries, glue the finished head onto the larger crescent moon.
  8. Lastly, glue the smaller crescent moon to the bigger crescent moon to make your cat’s tail.

October 18: Edible Frankensteins

Materials:
A bag of marshmallows, bag of green confectionary coating chocolate, chocolate sprinkles, pop sticks, black food decorator pen

  1. Melt the green chocolate in a bowl.
  2. Push pop stick in a marshmallow and dip in the chocolate.
  3. Immediately afterwards, dip the top of the marshmallow in chocolate sprinkles. The melted chocolate will help the sprinkles stick!
  4. Let the chocolate dry.
  5. Once dry, use the pen to draw on Frankenstein’s face.

October 19: Monster Magnets

Materials:
  1. Bottle caps, paint (any color you want), googly eyes, black marker, pipe cleaners, circle magnets, glue, modeling clay, scissors
  2. Depending on what bottle cap you have, you may have a fun color to work with already! If not, paint the bottle cap and let dry.
  3. Attach googly eyes with glue.
  4. Cut pipe cleaners about a cm long each and glue above eyes to act as eyebrows.
  5. Take a black marker and draw in a mouth.
  6. To make into a magnet, take a piece of modeling clay that will fit inside the bottle cap and glue it in.
  7. Glue the magnet onto the modeling clay.

October 20: Halloween Bat

Materials:
1 empty and clean egg carton, 2 googly eyes, glue, black paint, white paper, scissors

  1. Use your scissors to cut out the part of the egg carton that you’ll need. Trim off everything but three egg pods.
  2. On the two outer egg pods, cut one side in scalloped edges; and for the other side trim them down to the bottom of the egg pod.
  3. Paint the entire egg carton black.
  4. Once the paint has dried, attach the googly eyes to the middle pod with glue.
  5. Lastly, cut your white paper into the shape of a spooky and fang-filled bat mouth. Glue it below the googly eyes.

October 21: Lollipop Ghosts

Materials:
Tissues, markers, lollipops, yarn or ribbon

  1. Take a lollipop and place it in the middle of a tissue.
  2. Use yarn or ribbon to tie a bow around the tissue at the base of the lollipop’s stick.
  3. Use markers to draw a face on the tissue paper over the candy part of the lollipop. You can get as creative as you want with your ghost’s facial expressions. 

October 22: Dirt Cake

Materials:
2 boxes instant chocolate pudding, 1 box instant vanilla pudding, 6 cups milk, 1 and 1/2 containers of Cool Whip, 1 and 1/2 packages of Oreos, lots of gummy worms

  1. Put your pudding and milk in a bowl and whisk for about 2 minutes.
  2. Put the pudding in the fridge.
  3. Put Oreo cookies in a zipped, plastic bag and crush them.  You can use a rolling pin, your hands, or even your feet for that part.
  4. Lightly mix cool whip into your cold pudding.
  5. Take your serving dish and put a thick later of Oreo cookies on the bottom and put some pudding on top.
  6. Throw in a couple of worms. 
  7. Make another layer with cookies, pudding and worms.
  8. On your top layer, cover with cookies and arrange worms to look like they're digging.

 October 23: Pumpkin Patchy

Materials:
Artificial pumpkin, fabric of choice, fabric scissors, hot glue gun, ribbon of choice (optional)

  1. Find a clean surface to work on
  2. Plug in the hot glue gun, tip: put a piece of paper or a napkin under the hot glue gun so that glue does not get on the surface
  3. Cut out a piece of fabric
  4. Apply glue to the edges and corners of the back of the fabric
  5. Place the fabric on the pumpkin
  6. Hold the fabric in place for about 10 seconds
  7. Repeat steps 3,4, and 5 until the pumpkin is completely covered in fabric patches
  8. If you are using ribbon: Cut the ribbon the same length as the piece of fabric
  9. Apply the hot glue to the piece of ribbon
  10. Attach the piece of ribbon to the pumpkin, tip: try to cover all fraying of the fabric with the ribbon
  11. Hold the ribbon in place for about 10 seconds
  12. Repeat steps 8, 9, 10, and 11 until all the sides of the fabric are covered with ribbon

 October 24: Pinecone Owl

Materials:
A pinecone, black fuzzy string (from any craft store), yellow felt (you can use construction paper or a candy corn too!), googly eyes, hot glue gun

  1. Measure and cut enough string to wrap around your pinecone, you can wrap the whole thing or just half!
  2. Wrap the pinecone and glue the ends to the back of the pinecone to secure them.
  3. Glue the googly eyes onto where an owl’s eyes would normally be.
  4. Cut a little triangular beak out of the yellow felt.
  5. Glue on the beak.

October 25: Spider Drink Cubes

Ingredients:
Spider rings, scissors, ice tray, water

  1. Rinse off the spider rings so they aren’t germy!
  2. Snip off the ring parts of the spiders so they fit in each ice cube mold.
  3. Fill up the ice tray until about a centimeter from the top.
  4. Place one spider into each ice cube mold in the tray.
  5. Let it freeze over night for some freaky refreshments!

October 26: Black Lace Candles

Materials:
A votive candle, a plain clear votive candle holder, black lace ribbon (from any craft store), hot glue gun

  1. Put a few tiny dots of hot glue onto the base of the candle votive holder—do one glue dot at a time as you are wrapping the lace around it (just so it doesn’t dry up). Do this around the top of the votive also, but make sure they’re tiny so you don’t see the glue dots from the outside.
  2. When you have finished wrapping the votive, make sure the lace is secured around the whole thing.
  3. Drop your candle inside and you have a pretty lace candle that will cast creepy shadows when lit!

 October 27: Candy Corn Cookies

Ingredients:
Sugar cookie mix or premade cookie dough (you can even use chocolate cookies), candy corn

  1. Follow the directions for mixing your cookie batter carefully—don’t forget to preheat your oven to the correct temperature. Bake your cookies.
  2. After your cookies are finished baking, let them cool for about ten minutes.
  3. While they are still warm, press one or more candy corns into the center of each cookie.
  4. Allow your cookies to cool for about twenty minutes, then enjoy!

October 28: Milk Jug-o-Lantern

Materials:
Empty milk jugs, a pencil, black sharpie marker, a strand of decorative lights (white, orange, or purple), an X-Aacto knife (or scissors, but the knife makes it easier)

  1. Make sure your milk jugs are clean before you start.
  2. Cut a hole into the back of your milk jug—make it towards the bottom so that it is less visible. The hole should be large enough to fit your hand into.
  3. Using a pencil first, trace the face or design you would like onto the front of the milk jug.
  4. Mark over your final design with your sharpie marker. Color in all the areas that need shading.
  5. After your sharpie shading has dried, ball up the light strand and put it into the hole at the back of your Jug-O-Lantern. Leave enough of the end out to plug it into the wall.
  6. Plug it in and enjoy!


October 29: Candy Corn Nails
Materials:
Yellow, orange and white nail polish; clear top coat

  1. Paint your whole nail with one coat of white polish to make sure your polish shows up opaque and not sheer. Wait a few minutes for the first coat to dry.
  2. Paint your whole nail with two coats of yellow nail polish. Wait a few minutes for this coat to completely dry.
  3. With a steady hand, paint ¾ of your nail orange, leaving the top ¼ yellow. Do two coats of this. Be careful to keep the lines as straight as possible between colors. Leave this to dry for a few extra minutes—take your time, with more coats of paint it’ll take a little longer to dry each time.
  4. Next, paint the tips of your nails white. Do two coats of this being careful to keep your lines straight. Allow this all to dry for about five minutes.
  5. Finally, paint on your top clear coat to avoid chipping. Dry for ten minutes.

 
October 30: Glitter Spider Rings

Materials:
Spider rings, clear spray paint with glitter (black glitter, silver glitter) or metallic spray paint (silver, bronze, gold), newspaper

  1. Lay out your newspaper outside, or somewhere safe that won’t get too messy with spray paint.
  2. Lay out your spider rings a few inches apart.
  3. Spray paint your spider rings covering every inch of the ring. THe more glitter spray you apply, the thicker the glitter will be. If you are using metallic spray paint, do two coats.
  4. Allow your rings to dry for 24 hours before you wear them!

October 31: Happy Halloween!
Take some time to enjoy all your creepy creations, eat some candy and read The Spindlers by Lauren Oliver. Happy Halloween! 
by GL | 2/1/2016
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