9 Devilishly Fun Decorating Projects

The Bell Jar

Serve up a helping of raven under glass with craftsstore crows and a real or faux nest under a glass hurricane. Nevermore, nevermore!

ON WOMAN'S DAY: 7 DIY Candy Corn Decorations

Ma and Pa Pun’kin

It’s American Gothic, scarecrow style, this well-turned-out couple of stuffed shirts…and hats and dress and overalls. Use wooden tomato stakes to add structure to straw-filled clothes and to serve as a “neck” for jack-o’-lantern heads. Drag out a rocking chair, prop Ma in a pail of sand, and your front porch is ready for arrivals.

Jack Be Little

Small carved pumpkins make perfect accent pieces wherever you decide to display them—like these in a faux cast iron planter created with black spray paint. Get your kids involved in the carving designs, but with all that straw around, don’t even think of having them use candles for these!

Safety Lights

The growing popularity of realistic battery-operated and rechargeable LED candles means you never have to worry about lighted jack-o’-lanterns, especially indoors, leaving you free to get monstrously creative with your decorating scheme.

Bats Are Flying

Create this Batty Centerpiece with black and dark brown construction paper (trace our bat pattern in the back of the book or draw freehand). Use a hole punch and bright orange paper to make the eyes; make fangs from white paper. Attach to clothespins and let them fly on a backyard branch in a weighted, be-mossed bucket.

Golden Delicious

Make these Apples Aglow by hollowing out the season’s crisp apples about an hour before guests arrive (rub cut edges with lemon so they don’t brown). Then drop in tealights and strike a match when the doorbell rings.

ON WOMAN'S DAY: 5 Spooktacular Wine Bottle Crafts

Treat Yourself

Fill pottery crocks, cups and bowls with little nibbles—black licorice sticks, candy pumpkins and other assorted small confections—and scatter them around on side tables for guests to snack on. Don’t forget the plastic spiders and petite gourds!

Clean Sweep

Two paper sandwich bags, the outer one shredded into partial strips, make cunning Broom Party Favors when they’re filled with candy and cinched around a stick with raffia cord.

ON WOMAN'S DAY: 10 Pumpkin Perfect Patterns

Signs of the Times

Use crafts-store rub-on transfers to create Scary Signs as placecards, buffet-table identifiers or just for decorating fun. Carefully burn around the edges, then glue to a black overlay to complete the morbid effect.