Halloween Party Ideas: 9 Tips to Create Ghostly Decor

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Creative Halloween Decorations Made Simple

Spooky spider webs, black flowers, creepy creatures, ghostly ghouls … Yep, it’s time to get your “scare” on and get in the Halloween spirit!

If you are among the many planning Halloween parties – whether you organize an elaborate Halloween horror show – (popular among serious celebrants) or arrange a relaxed gathering with lighthearted Halloween crafts or ghoulish Halloween party games – you can affordably create an ethereal theme.

Creative Homemade Lanterns

We’ve focused on providing some Halloween recipes that will allow you to create budget-friendly holiday fun. These Halloween ideas are easy and mainly require items you already have – no need to spend a lot at that temporary Halloween store at the mall. Other ideas involve affordable items you would likely buy anyway or can reuse for future projects. (And, okay, we do offer up a couple of suggestions for spooky centerpieces that cost a bit more – but these otherworldly options will give your Halloween party theme oomph!)

#1  Halloween Crafts for Candy-Corn-Chic Style

Candy Corn Vase | Photo by Paula Deen

You may have seen a holiday flower arrangement for sale with a candy corn-filled vase and matching mix of orange and yellow blossoms. If you’ve got the budget, call your florist and order one for your party. You’ll free up time to focus on other tasks and ensure you get a professionally designed focal point for your festivities.

If cash is limited, create one of the Halloween flower arrangements yourself. To duplicate the look, use a clear-glass container already hiding in your cupboard. Place a smaller container of about equal height inside your larger clear-glass vase. (The smaller container need not be clear but must be waterproof.) Fill the inside vase with fresh water and flower preservative. Carefully pour candy corn between the two containers to fill the space. Add orange, yellow and white flowers – the colors of the ubiquitous candy corn.

#2  Green Halloween: A New Holiday Trend

Want to follow the reduce-reuse-recycle theme this Halloween? Have some time to get extra creative? Create some funky flower vases using old soda, beer or wine bottles. Simply paint the exteriors with white, yellow and orange spray paint to duplicate the stacked colors in a candy corn piece. Then fill each vase with a single stem of red gerbera, yellow dahlia, orange aster or another favorite flower. Line them up along a windowsill or ledge, stack them on a stairway or set them together for a centerpiece.

Orange Gerbera Daisies are perfect for Halloween

#3   Pumpkin Crafts: Carve out a Halloween Vase

Pumpkin Basket | Photo by Martha Stewart

Kids and adults alike adore pumpkins. So focus on the unique varieties of gourds available today – smooth, knobby, variegated and more – to create natural vases (which also hold over well as Thanksgiving decorations in American households). Martha Stewart ingeniously carves pumpkins into basket shapes that she fills with burgundy roses, kale and protea. (She recommends choosing a lopsided pumpkin for this Halloween craft. Draw a handle that extends over the top of the pumpkin with the stem in the area you will carve away. Cut along your markings, remove the pumpkin’s interior flesh and seeds, set a waterproof container or floral foam inside, and insert flowers to create your arrangement.)

If you prefer something longer lasting, choose from the variety of manmade pumpkin baskets available and consider using mums instead of fresh flowers.

For a more high-style look, Stewart pares out the interior of a white pumpkin, fills it with white dahlias and places it on a white cake stand. Halloween ooh-la-la!

Here are a few more great Halloween flower arrangement ideas.

Halloween Decoration Ideas With Spookier Themes

If you are planning a party for adults or older kids, opt for some nail-biting accessories. Here are a few suggestions for fearsome fun:

#4  Halloween Party Food? Not! These Posies Are Poisonous!

Poison Bottle Vase | Photo by Oliver Gruener

Want to continue the recycling theme? Create an apothecary of lethal liquids.

Soak the labels off some bottles. Cut a black-paper label for each. Using white chalk, mark an “XXX” on one label to represent poison. On another, draw a skull and crossbones. Write the word “Poison” on the third. You can also download images, size them to fit your bottles and print them. Affix a label and insert an individual flower stem in each. (Choose anemically pale white flowers to complement the deathly theme.)

Then group the bottles for a focal point or line them up to show off each caustic caution.

#5   Black Flowers Create Ghostly Glamour

Black flowers don’t exist in the natural world, but that doesn’t mean you can’t find them. And it doesn’t mean you have to turn to artificial flowers. Instead, use dye or spray paint to create a look that Mother Nature can’t.

Black Roses are perfect for Halloween

Dye: Esprit Growers in California has created “Twilight” black roses. These dyed-black beauties offer an unearthly look that is pure gothic glamour. Call your florist to order some.

Or create your own Black Flowers (choose a light-colored flower, such as white carnations or hydrangeas; add dye or ink to the water; cut stems at an angle and insert into the water; let stand and allow the stems to uptake the color to the flower head). For more specific instructions, read this article: 3 Easy Techniques to Create Black Flowers.

Spray paint: Floral spray paints can give you the Goth look, too. Your craft or hobby store sells colors ranging from flat black to dark blackberry and ghostly gray. (Your florist can also order flower paint from local wholesalers for you.)

#6  Halloween Ideas for Eerie Embellishments

Accessorizing your bouquets is another option for enhancing your haunted-holiday tabletops. Stretch faux cobwebs over a bouquet of red roses; choose a black urn or vase for an air of macabre. Or sprinkle plastic spiders across the top of a bouquet of cream-colored roses for stark drama. Allow rubber snakes to slither among blossoms of orange and crimson chrysanthemums.

Flower Arrangement with Spider Web | Photo by Will Folsom

Halloween Party Ideas for Kids

If you don’t want to build a full-fledged Halloween town that will give little tourists sleepless nights, no worries. You can create a funky-spirited celebration that foregoes the traditional spiders, snakes, bones and blood. Here are some clever ideas to consider:

#7  Crafts for Kids

Kids love to help decorate, so give them the task of making some cute creatures that they can insert into your Halloween bouquets. Gather up a supply of pipe cleaners, wiggly eyes, paint and glue. Then, show the kids how to construct the Halloween crafts. Curl the pipe cleaner bodies or bases around wooden picks or straws and nestle the mini monsters into your flower arrangements.

Spider, Pumpkin & Black Cat Crafts for Kids

#8  Monster Hands Craft for Kids

Want some more Halloween crafts for the kids? Show them how to make gruesome monster hands. Whip up some green gelatin and spoon it into latex surgical gloves. Tie the wrists closed, paint on black fingernails with black marker and let kids place the plastic appendages into flower planters and other containers in your home.

#9   A Halloween Idea for Some Spooky Chic

If you want to create a more low-key but ultra-stylish look for your Halloween get-together, add subtle touches of black and orange to your tablescapes. Wrap low, white ceramic vases with wide black ribbon and layer a white, slightly narrower ribbon on top. Add a thinner ribbon in orange on top of the white. Fill the containers with orange roses in low, rounded masses. Placemats and other accessories that pick up hints of orange and black complete the look.

Witch Costume Idea | Photo by Bosela

Once you’ve decided on your Halloween decorations, you have one more chore, of course: Considering all your Halloween costume ideas. You could follow the crowds and choose a trendy Snooki or Lady Gaga Halloween costume. Or you could save that money (for more flowers!) and join the frugalistas with a sense of humor. You know the ones; they never buy costumes. Instead, they create their own cleverly funny Halloween costumes (like the guy in regular clothes with the sign that says, “Nudist on strike”).

Then again, I can probably scare my guests silly simply by not wearing any makeup and adding a witch’s hat.

Hmm… I think that could be among my best Halloween costumes yet! Broooo ha ha!

Written by

Gina B. Kellogg

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