In fact, it's devilishly delightful for children to spend time making their own holiday decor or treats.
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In this Modern Mom segment, Bay Area craft expert Sophie Maletsky shows ABC7 News anchor Kristen Sze 3 simple craft projects that are all treat and no trick.
1. Glowing Eyeball
What you will need:
- Ping pong ball
- Scissors
- Sharpie Pens (Different Colors)
- X-Acto Knife
- Cutting Surface
- Electric Tea Light
- Hot glue gun or glue dots
Step 1: Decorate your ping pong ball with your markers. You can make this into an eyeball, a monster, a silly face, whatever you desire! I made a simple monster eye
Step 2: Add some blood shots around the pupil or perhaps some other scary accents. Remember, this will light up from the inside so everything you draw will be visible.
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Step 3: You will need to make a hole in the ping pong ball to insert the electric tea light. Using your X-Acto knife, carefully make an "x" shape in the ball.
Step 4: Once your "x" shape is created, use your X-Acto knife to create a hole large enough to insert the tealight bulb. Test the hole as you make it to be sure its big enough. (you can always make it larger)
Step 5: I like to color the tea light base so it becomes part of the little creature, but its up to you. I created a little zig-zag mouth as the base for my eyeball.
Step 6: Use a small amount of hot glue or glue dots around the perimeter of the hole and carefully attach the tea light.
Step 7: All done!
Step 8: Turn off the lights and let the spooky fun begin.
More details and instructional video here
2. Monster Hand
What you will need:
- Popcorn
- Food service or latex gloves
- Candy corn or small candies
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- Scissors
- Curling ribbon
Step 1: Begin by placing small colored candies at the end of each finger.
Step 2: Fill each finger with popcorn. You will need to do this is small batches to ensure that popcorn gets down into each finger.
Step 3: Once the fingers are full, pour in more popcorn to fill out the hand.
Step 4: Twist the top of the glove to seal.
Step 5: Tie it off with curling ribbon.
Step 6: Use your scissors to curl both sides of the ribbon.
More details here
3. Ghost Puppet:
What you will need:
- Scissors
- Sharpie Pens
- White card stock Paper
- Paper Cups
- White plastic table cloth
- Styrofoam balls
- Glue Dots
- Wooden Skewer
- Googly eyes
Step 1: Take your white plastic tablecloth and cut it into a 9" inch by 9 inch" square
Step 2: Use scissors to cut out a tombstone from your white card stock. Decorate with your desired words (R.I.P., etc) using your sharpie pen
Step 3: Take small styrofoam ball and cover the whole head with the glue dots (About 5 should be good)
Step 4: Stick styrofoam ball onto whooden skewer (Pointy side in)
Step 5: Glue ball on stick into the middle of the white tablecloth
Step 6: Use another skewer to poke a whole in the bottom of paper cup
Step 7: Use glue dots to glue tombstone to the cup
Step 6: Thread skewer with ball and tablecloth through the bottom of the cup, so that the ball cloth is draped over ball
Step 8: Use 4 glue dots to glue the four corners of the tablecloth to the inside of the cup
Step 9: Fix two glue dots to the styrofoam head of the ghost. Then place googly eyes on each glue dot
Step 10: Pull the skewer down to hide ghost in your cup... push it up to surprise your friends! Enjoy!
A similar craft video for a groundhog pop-up puppet here