You don’t need to buy plastic stuff to have fun on Halloween! Get lots of decorations ideas in this week’s podcast. For ideas on Halloween costumes from recycled materials, check out last year’s Trashmagination Halloween podcast.

You can listen to my podcast episode on Halloween decorations from recycled materials in this YouTube video. It originally aired in October 2018.

Also to see photos of these projects and many more Halloween decorations from recycled materials, check out the Trashmagination Pinterest board.

Halloween Candy Bowls from Recycled Materials

• Papier-mâché bowls – My favorite is by the blog The Long Thread. She makes an orange pumpkin one and an white ghost one. She uses an actual pumpkin as the base – the bottom where there is no stem.
• Candy bowl from recycled candy wrappers – Finally you can justify eating some of the candy before the kids come trick-or-treating! This design is by Jodi Kahn. You can also glue candy wrappers to a recycled pail.
• Frankenstein’s head bucket from a green 2-liter soda bottle
• Frankenstein’s head where the kids take the candy from his open mouth – This is made from those rectangular plastic juice containers. It could be the head of Frankenstein, a robot or alien.
• Ghost candy bowl by draping a white sheet over a bucket – by one of my favorites, Sadie Seasongoods

Decorate your Yard with Halloween Decorations from Recycled Materials

• Skeleton made from recycled plastic milk jugs – You use one jug for the head or skull, one for the rib-cage and then 2-3 more to make the legs, feet, arms and hands.
• Ghosts from broken ceiling fan blades – a Sadie Seasongoods craft
• Ghost windsocks from recycled cans – Paint the cans white, turn them upside-down and paint on black eyes and mouth. You add strips of white fabric hanging down from the can.
• Giant rope spider web – I made my spider from the black plastic containers found in frozen meals. I made my web by attaching a lot of six-pack rings, but rope is much easier.

Front Porch Halloween Decorations from Recycled Materials

• Milk jug ghost lights – You line up some plastic milk jugs, add ghost faces with black paint or markers, and then stringing white holiday lights inside. It looks like a line of ghosts. You can download a bunch of face templates.
• Realistic skull from recycled milk jugs – It requires owning a resin dskull that you use as a base, and then you use a heat gun to melt the milk jugs over the base.
• Ghost lights from K-cups – Take white K-cups and draw a ghost face, then attach one on each a string light.
• Pumpkin from Tide Pods container
• Halloween wreath from old socks
• Nail-and-string skull art – My daughter made this inspired by the blog A Beautiful Mess.
• Tin can luminaria
• Zombie Barbies – from Crafts by Amanda
• Glow-in-the-dark Monster Rocks – from Crafts by Amanda
• Wooden pallet Halloween decorations – graveyards and fences

Indoor Halloween Decorations from Recycled Materials

This category of decorations is great if you are hosting a Halloween party. These could also be used to decorate your porch on Halloween night. A lot of these decoration ideas could also be good activity ideas for a Halloween party if you host a party with people who like to make crafts.

• Haunted figurines – from Sadie Seasongood – She took old figurines and made them look haunted by painting them black and then giving them red eyes.
• Spider’s web from a recycled doily – from Sadie Seasongoods – you stretch the doily on an embroidery hoop and add a little spider.
• Ghosts from frosted glass light covers – from Sadie Seasongoods – If you go to a place like a Habitat for Humanity Restore, you can get them cheap. They look like ghosts when they are sitting on a shelf if you add eyes and a mouth. She puts glow sticks inside, but you could string reusable plug-in lights.
• Graveyard terrarium – from the blog Just Crafty Enough – This is a variation on a popular craft which involves a recycled glass jar with a little scene inside, and usually some small plants. For this craft, you put a dried out branch that looks like a dead tree, a little gravestone made from Sculpey and dried hay along the bottom.
• Bell Jar Spooky Display – the blog Craft Your Happiness shows how to make those old-timey looking jars – called cloches or bell jars – from recycled clear, two liter soda bottles. Inside the jars, they displayed pretend dragon eggs or bird models or other kind of creepy items.
• Vitamin or Tylenol bottle to Potions bottle – It involves using a glue gun to add words like “Poison” or “Eye of Newt” and then you paint over that 3-dimensional stuff with layers of paint to make it look old.
• Halloween silhouette lanterns – Paint a jar orange or cover it with tissue paper, then add a black silhouette. The blog called Le Coin de Mel shows silhouette designs that you could borrow.
• Glow-in-the-dark Skeleton Cross-stitch – by Martha Stewart Living
• Eye ball pom pom – By the Mr. P blog

Show Details

• Script for this podcast episode about Halloween decorations from recycled materials (not a transcript but gives the main ideas)
• The Trashmagination podcast theme music is Kitchen from the Marian Circle Drum Brigade.

After this podcast aired, I designed a fun bat craft made from a recycled toilet paper roll and a black plastic frozen meal tray!