All of the cute Halloween lanterns I have seen in the store and online inspired me to want some for my daughter’s Halloween party. But being me, I wanted to try my hand at decorating some myself so I bought some plain white paper lanterns at Oriental Trading Company, Inc. I knew from previous experience that doing the same design over and over again would quickly get tedious so I wanted to do a whole bunch of different designs. I’ve included a photo montage of the ones we did do with a short explanation of each image. If you have specific questions about how I made one of them, please feel free to e-mail me and I will be happy to provide detailed instructions. Most of them were actually very simple to make! That was the beauty of it and what allowed us to make so many of them in one afternoon!

1. Mike and Sulley: One of my daughter’s favorite movies is Monsters, Inc.. I had a lot of Sulley blue fur left over from covering her chair and ottoman so I used it to make a Sulley with purple spots made from foam. Mike was even easier! A great big foam eye and some foam horns and he was good to go.
2. Ghost: I didn’t even have to paint the lantern for this one. Some black foam eyes and mouth and some shredded white tissue paper hanging from the bottom and you have instant ghost!
3. Mummy: My friend took the leftover tissue paper and covered the mummy with “bandages”. Then, she added the eerie green eyes and mouth.
4. Frankenstein’s monster: One of my favorite novels from the college days. The monster sports some bolts on the side of his head and he obviously hasn’t been flossing!
5. Cat: I like the purple highlights on the kitty cat and his fat whiskers.
6. On the lights: I used a strand of 50 lights to hang my lanterns. I skipped a few lights in between just to give them some space to hang. Also, when I made these, I didn’t worry about how the back was going to look because I knew they would be hanging on a wall, but if you are going to hang yours across a room, be sure you make them aesthetically pleasing all the way around.
7. Vampire: The pointed hair and red tissue paper cape make this guy one of my favorites.
8. Spider: We used really fuzzy pipe cleaners to make his legs.
9. Bat: The hardest thing about the bat (and the owl) was cutting the wings so that they would stick to the rounded shape of the lantern. I used lots of hot glue to make sure they wouldn’t fall off mid-party.
10. Owl: Big eyes and some painted-on feathers make this owl barn ready.