How To Paint Your Pampas Grass For A Dramatic Halloween Look

Spooky season is almost upon us! So, it's time to get ready and plan out your decor. Though the aisles at our favorite stores are filled with all sorts of eye-catching festive items, going the DIY route will save you a good bit of cash. But that doesn't mean your house has to be haunted by kitsch. You can add some spirit to your home while still maintaining elegance with this painted pampas grass project – pampas grass can be painted any color and used as holiday decor.

Pampas grass is a tall ornamental grass with a fluffy, feather-like top often placed in tall vases to add decorative texture to your home. Natural pampas grass is white, beige, or pink in tone. Some crafters are painting black pampas grass for Halloween and adding other creepy touches like plastic spiders and webbing to give it a freakier feel. But you can also opt for orange, green, purple, or a mixture of colors to scare up your home.

For this DIY, you'll need a can of spray paint and a piece of cardboard. You might also want some zip ties or string and a clothesline, but that's not totally necessary. The best way to go about spray painting your pampas grass is to tie the blades of grass to your clothesline with your zip ties or string so that each blade of grass hangs upside down. Hold a piece of cardboard behind your blade of grass and start spraying it. The cardboard will ensure the paint doesn't go everywhere and fully saturates your grass. If you can't hang your grass from a clothesline, placing a piece of cardboard on the ground and painting on top of it should work fine.

Once your grass is fully coated with paint, let it air dry then you can add some fun touches. Use a hot glue gun to affix plastic spiders to your grass. To create webbing, touch your glue gun to a piece of plastic or metal and press the trigger as you pull away to create a string effect. Hang these pieces of string on your grass near the faux spiders. If you're not into spiders, you can opt to spritz your grass with some spray adhesive and sprinkle it with glitter to make it pop. Your black pampas grass can be placed in a vase or made into a wreath.

For this hack, you might want to consider pampas grass which is less mature and doesn't have as much fluff. The fluffier your grass is, the harder it will be to penetrate the inner fluff with paint. Be sure to pay extra attention to the center of the grass, or else you may end up with a two-tone effect. On the other hand, some people prefer the multi-tone look. 

The dried paint may cause your grass to lose some of its feathery texture and get a little stiff. An alternative is dyeing your grass using fabric dye. To do this, prepare your dye according to the manufacturer's instructions. Then add a few drops of dish soap to your boiling water. Wear gloves when dipping your grass into the dye, and let the grass soak for about a half hour. The longer you let them soak, the brighter in color your plumes will be. Hang your grass to dry for at least 24 hours. You can then use a hair dryer to get them to fluff up.