Mess Makers: Easy Halloween crafts for little hands

Kari Marotta, the local teacher and mom behind Mess Makers, a pop-up arts and crafts studio for families, shares some easy Halloween crafts that require items you probably have around the house.

Boo Rock: Go outside and find rocks that can be painted to look like ghosts. Use white paint for the bodies and black paint for their faces. They look great tucked into your planters.

Lil’ Pumpkin: A great way to reuse old paper sacks. Cut a square out of the sack. Take some old magazine pages and squish into a ball. Wrap the paper around the ball, close with a rubber band. Paint to look like a pumpkin and wrap the rubber band with a pipe cleaner.

Mardi Gras Mummies: Use white streamers to create a mummy, cut into different lengths and glue down on a piece of paper. Embelish as you wish with feathers, pipe cleaners, googly eyes and other decorations.

Puffy Ghosts and Pumpkins: Mix equal parts of liquid glue and shaving cream. Dab the paint onto the paper, be sure not to spread it out as it will take the puffiness away. When dry, add the face. If you want color, add paint to the glue first, mix and then add the shaving cream.

Spiders: Use large cotton pom-poms and pipe cleaners to make these cute little crawlers. You have to really push the pipe cleaner through the center of the pom-pom and add some glue to hold it there.

EEK! There’s a spider on my head headband: Use construction paper to make these adorable headbands. For the headband, cut the length of construction paper in thirds. Glue two strips together for the headband and use the other strip for the legs.