DIY Halloween Countdown Garland

The spooks, the surprises, the costumes, the treats…Halloween is a scream. Count down the days until Halloween with a fun stair banister decoration. No stairs? No problem. This would work equally as well on a fireplace mantel or on the wall. Your kids are too old (or cool) to think it’s fun? Load the Halloween advent with treats for yourself. Why not? You do the hard work making things fun, you deserve daily rewards.

This is actually two garlands overlapping. Go big with this decoration to make a big impact. The first thing I did to get started was to raid my crafting supplies to see what I had to work with. Make some magic happen with a few black garbage bags, remnant fabric, wood beads, feathers and paint.

 

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Supplies

For Black Bewitched Garland:

• Black garbage bags (I used 4)
• Remnant fabric
• Creepy Cloth (from the dollar store)
• Feathers
• Scissors
• Jute Cord:15 feet for my 8+ foot stair rail (recognize this from the jute covered pot post?)

 

For Eyeball Calendar Countdown Garland:

• Assorted sizes of wood beads or shiny beads would be fun, too!
• Craft paint in a variety of colors (be sure to have white, black, blue, green and brown)
• Rust-oleum Clear Lacquer or varnish
• Artist’s Paint brushes (one bigger and one for detail)
• Palette for mixing paint, or paper plate
• Fine Polished Hemp Cording (13 feet for my 8+ foot stair rail)
• Gray Fabric Gift bags
• 2.5 -3 inch wood craft discs
• Cordless Drill
• Small Drill Bit (5/64)
• Scrap Wood for work surface
• Sewing Needle and black thread
• Stencil for Numbers (or write them on)
• Stencil brush
• Paper Towel
• Strand of Small lights (optional)

*As an Amazon Associate, I have the potential to earn from qualifying purchases.

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Instructions

Black Bewitched Garland, aka. Plastic Bag Garland

Step 1:

Cut jute cording to desired length. My stairs are a little over 8 feet in the one section, so I made the cording 15 feet long to account for tying the ends and for swagging. Put a slip knot in each end to tie the garland to the banister knobs later, or leave enough length to tie ends to the banister in whatever way you desire.

Keep the garbage bags folded when cutting. Trim off the tops of the bags only, and then cut lengthwise in wavy half inch strips.

Cut the “creepy cloth” into roughly 2 inch wide strips. The more uneven, the creepier it will look.

Cut the fabric remnant into uneven strips of varying lengths. I chose fabric that would fray and that was see through to give it a more ghostly feel.

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Step 2:

Unfold all the materials. Tie pieces randomly to the jute cord. Just loop them over and make a single knot. Surprisingly, random patterns are trickier than you think. Well, they are for me anyway.

TIP: Tie the fabric and Creepy Cloth to the jute cord first and then fill the spacing in with the strips of plastic bag. Be sure to stagger the lengths of the plastic by tying them unevenly or cutting off the end and re-tying the smaller part on the cording.

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Step 3:

Hang finished garland from the banister, swagging it and tying in intervals. Use some of the hemp cording as ties. Attach a bundle of feathers to cover the hemp cording ties. Black iridescent rooster feathers give the dark, yet shimmery glow to the garland.

*Now is a great time to add the delicate string of fairy lights.

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Halloween Countdown Garland

Step 1:

Drill small holes in 31 wooden discs. Make the holes as large as you need to sew the discs to the fabric bags. A 5/64 inch drill bit was used for the holes in the wooden discs pictured.

TIP: Place a scrap piece of wood underneath the disc you are drilling to keep the drill bit from damaging the work surface.

TIP: Stack a few discs and drill through more than one at a time.

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Step 2:

Paint both sides of the 31 discs black. This allows for options; if one side is rougher than you would like after painting just flip it to the opposite side.

Use a light colored paint, in this case I choose white, to stencil on the numbers 1-31. There is no need to stencil if you like how your numbers look by hand. Mine look lame, so I go with stencils. If you need tips for stenciling, see the link at the bottom of the post.)

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Step 3:

Using a metallic craft paint, lightly dry brush around the edge of the wooden disc. It doesn’t photograph as pretty as it looks in real life. Sparkle like that isn’t meant for a still shot. Haha!

Sew one disc onto the lower section of each bag with the needle and thread color of your choice. If the discs are affixed lower, there is less chance of them getting tweaked weird when the drawstrings are pulled tight.

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Step 4:

Paint the wooden beads. Save 15-16 of the largest ones to make into eyeballs later. I painted more black beads in all sizes than I did of the other colors. For the colored beads, I painted metallic paints or a solid color with a dry brush of metallic paint over them. The strand of beads would also look great with shiny plastic or glass beads. I may keep my eye out when Christmas items go on sale to see if there are any shiny bead garlands that will work with the Halloween theme. Maybe a silver or gold?

TIP: Use a muffin tin to help keep bead sizes separate while painting and while stringing the beads.

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Step 5:

Paint the largest wooden beads white as a base for the eyeball beads. Once dry, paint a large circle in the center to make the iris. Blue, green and brown were my choices, but you could do creepy zombie eyes or snake eyes, or something.

If it is a green eye, use the same green paint as the iris and darken a little with the brown or black paint and also lighten a little with the white paint. Use the thin detail brush to make a starburst with the colors going out from the center of the iris. Once there are a few layers of different paint values, paint a black pupil in the center of the eye and then add white dots for the reflection. I also used some of the metallic rose gold paint on the white of the eyes to make thin lines for the veins.

Repeat the process for all the eyeball beads and in all the desired colors.

Spray with the clear lacquer so the eyes have a shiny finish.

TIP: A wooden skewer was a perfect fit to string eyeballs on and prop up outside while I sprayed with the clear lacquer. Never before imagined I would have a need to type that sentence.

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Step 6:

Once the wooden beads are all dry, string them in random patterns onto the thin polished hemp cord. Even though it was a random pattern, I tried to put black beads by the eyeballs so there was more contrast and they stood out from the rest of the garland.

TIP: Put some masking tape on the end of the cord to make a point for threading on the beads and to prevent the cording end from fraying.

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Step 7:

After the beads are strung, loop one side of the drawstring bag over the garland and pull the bag through the drawstring to keep it looped over the bead garland. Space the bags in order from 1-31 and every few inches with the tag facing the front.

Hang the beaded garland on the banister or mantel. Pull up and secure however many times the swag looks good to you.

Fill the bags with small treats and goodies. Some ideas for daily treats are cookies, candy, nail polish, Halloween scrunchies, glow sticks, stickers, vampire teeth, new ear buds, small denomination gift cards, or sweet notes of encouragement.

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I’m sort of in love with the Miss Havisham (Great Expectations) vibe the garland gives off. There is some class but with an underlying old and creepy tone. Don’t mind me, I’m just over here slightly obsessed with how amazing the eyeballs look. A detail that is subtle until you take a closer look. If I was to add anything to this Halloween countdown decoration, it would be to add a little bling with some sparkle beads. The metallic paint doesn’t quite catch the light as well as I was hoping, but it is in a low light area so that’s probably the reason.

It is nice to get some creepy Halloween decorations together but to skip on the overly gorey ones. I suppose the eyeballs could be considered borderline gore, but at any rate, it looks good. Getting into my Halloween decorations groove is one way to make my haunted house a home. 💙

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