Make a Halloween Ghost Family Display

Atti has been really into ghosts lately. He saw a SuperWhy episode with “The Ghost Who Was Afraid of Halloween” and ever since then that’s the only thing about Halloween that interests him. This year he’s begged to dress up as either a ghost, or Papa Drac from Hotel Transylvania, which breaks my crafter heart. But, Halloween is all about giving the kids what they want, eh? So I figured I better incorporate some ghosts into our plans.

I’m kind of obsessed with this little ghost family. It’s one of those rare projects that actually turned out even cuter than it was in my head, and DOES NOT take drawing or painting talent. If you can draw a blob or paint a smiley face, you can make this project.

I used a piece of plywood I had sitting in the garage and drew a bunch of blobs on it. I wanted a Bear ghost, a Me ghost, and an Atti ghost, and you can see from all my rogue Sharpie lines that it was not done in a first try. I couldn’t figure out if ghosts would have hands, and then how I would draw those hands with my laughable drawing skills. A little googling for inspiration showed me that ghosts are just blobs and don’t need hands. They don’t even need arms if you want to get down to it. You really just need a few blobs with smiley faces and that will be enough to get the job done.

Cut out your ghost family only on the outermost line. The inside lines you’ll put on with a Sharpie after you paint it. You just want to cut out the silhouette. A jigsaw is the way to go for this, just remember that you can’t make right angle turns with it, so plan your cuts accordingly. You want to come in to the corners from the outside.

Then it’s time to paint. Along with not being an excellent drawer, I’m not a very good painter, so I kept that simple too. I just spray painted the whole thing white, used a Sharpie to draw the bodies back on, and painted on the faces. A very light touch with a sponge in gray paint will emphasize the edges and make the ghosts look a little less flat.

Now it’s time for hardware so these ghosts can stand up. You need another piece of wood to act as your kickstand. Mine is scrap wood from another project spray painted white to match the ghost. Attach it to the back with a hinge, but be careful you don’t use screws so long they go through the plywood. Like someone I know.

You need a way to keep the hinge from opening up all the way and falling flat on the ground. So I used two hooks, one screwed into the back of the ghost and the other screwed into the kickstand, with a piece of chain keeping them connected. Now the hinge can only open as far as the chain will let it.

This is one of those decorations that you could find in a catalog and spend too much money on. Or, you could just make it yourself. We are all so delighted by having a ghost family that matches our family, I think any family would get a kick out of that.

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