Low Waste Halloween Decor

Have you decorated for Halloween yet? Is your Samhain feast planned?  Have you already managed to set up your altar for Día de los Muertos?  However you celebrate, decorating for the festivities shouldn’t have to create a bunch of garbage, or cost a lot of money.  This week it’s all about low waste decor!

Some of our tried and true favorite decorations can be put together with some cardboard and some hot glue.  You can make candles out of hollowed out pie pumpkins, some beeswax, and coconut oil.  Those garbage bag ghosts we all grew up with can be made of old bed sheets or tea towels.  The possibilities are endless, really.

There’s a million tutorials, all over the internet, that can and will teach you how to make anything.  Pinterest alone is a veritable gold mine of any handmade craft you could ever want to attempt, with step by step picture instructions on how to make your spooky season dreams come true.  Instead of adding to the din, we thought we’d opt for some reminders/swap suggestions. A simple, more umbrella-esque reminder, if you will, when it comes to your holiday decor and crafting endeavors.

If something can be made with compostable, recyclable, or reusable materials: please do so.  Need some structure? Use cardboard.  Need spiderwebs of any size?  Jute or rope that’l you’ll reuse is a great option. Don’t forget about dried flowers, too! Most ghosty crafts can be completed with the use of old bed sheets, which can later be fashioned into any array of fort building materials, cleaning rags, dog towels, etc.  You can make just about anything out of paper mache, which is a welcome plastic substitution. See what we’re aiming for?  Anything you use to decorate with--try to envision what its life will look like when its no longer a pumpkin, ghoul, goblin, skeleton, haunted house, etc.  

If you need a little inspiration, ask us! We recently undertook an entire window display made with almost 100% reused or recyclable materials. With a little inspiration from Ms. Ella Fitzgerald and some time spent on YouTube, our Harvest Moon themed seasonal display made low waste decor beautiful, affordable, and hopefully the winner of the contest we are participating in.  If you’ve yet to see it, come by and ask us some questions about it! If you have seen it and you like it, please definitely vote for us here.  We put a lot of time and effort into it, and we’d certainly love to win. 

More inspiration ideas, you say?  Please come to either one of our citrus garland making classes! (Sign up here!) Molly has been hard at work slicing up citrus for y’all to turn into beautiful garlands, which are universally festive enough to deck your halls through the end of the year.  She’s also managed to make several examples which are currently gracing the doorways in our shop.  

All of this is to offer as examples that festive, beautiful, and effective holiday decor doesn’t have to be expensive, made of plastic, or create much waste.  With a little bit of ingenuity and creativity, you can create some real cool decorations for the season, get the family involved, and have some fun doing it.  Any other suggestions? Drop em in the comments!