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Ghost Town | Tween Crafts

Ghost Town

Total Time Needed: Afternoon Or Evening

Haunt your home with a tabletop village inhabited by spooky ghosts and tiny trick-or-treaters.

Materials

  • Paper lunch bags
  • Corrugated cardboard
  • Crayons, markers or tempera paint
  • Newspaper
  • Pipe cleaners
  • Small tree branch
  • Colored tissue paper
  • Cotton batting
  • Poster board
  • Plastic bottle cap
  • Small orange beads

Instructions

Ghost Town - Step 1

1. BUILDINGS: To construct each building, trace around an unopened paper lunch bag onto a piece of corrugated cardboard and then cut out the tracing. Use the same method to make a second cardboard cutout.

Ghost Town - Step 2

2. Now fit the matching cardboard pieces into the bag and stuff the middle with newspaper. Then use markers or paints to transform the stuffed bag into a store or house (remember that the bottom of the bag will be the roof). Once you've finished making buildings, arrange them on a sheet of poster board.

Ghost Town - Step 3

3. LANDSCAPING: For an autumn tree, just use a bare trimmed branch. Cut a hole in the poster board to fit the base of the branch and apply glue if needed to hold it in place. (You can even use a craft punch to make miniature tissue-paper leaves to glue onto the tree or pile on the ground.)

Ghost Town - Step 4

4. Add a plastic bottle cap basket filled with orange-bead pumpkins and a stack of miniature dried-grass hay bales. Then you can haunt the finished village with paper bats, cotton ghosts and tiny trick-or-treaters (see instructions for crafting them below).

Ghost Town - Step 5

5. WITCHES: For a body, bend a pipe cleaner into an inverted V. Twist a second pipe cleaner around the first to create arms. Glue on tissue-paper boots. For a dress, cut a head hole in a black tissue-paper square, then slip it on and tie it with yarn. Glue on thread for hair and a paper hat.

6. BATS: Bend a 1-inch length of pipe cleaner into a V, then glue it onto black tissue-paper bat wings. Use floral wire to attach the bat to a building or tree.

7. SPIRITS: Using the same method described for making a witch, but fashion a body from white pipe cleaners. Glue cotton batting to the body, front and back, until well covered. Use a black marker to draw on eyes and a mouth. Then tuck the finished ghosts between buildings.

8. GHOSTS: For a trick-or-treater ghost, craft a stick figure from pipe cleaners. Drape a white tissue over the body and then use your fingers to scrunch and shape. Draw on eyes and a mouth.

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