Martha Stewart Shares Her Favorite Halloween Decorations When You're On A Tight Budget

Whether you're on a tight budget or simply don't want to invest in temporary seasonal pieces, there are endless DIY ideas out there to create some impressive Halloween decorations. The DIY route is great when decorating for holidays like Halloween because it gives you a creative activity to engage in with family or friends and makes use of items you already own, which means less waste. As for ideas, from freestanding ghosts to a mad scientist lab, Martha Stewart has some quick, budget-friendly Halloween crafting projects you can try that'll turn your home into a haunted house.

During a Halloween segment on the "Today" show (via YouTube), Stewart shared several DIY ideas for the October 31 holiday, starting with spooky silhouette shadows for your windows, made with muslin, organza, and black craft paint. To create your own figures, simply draw an outline of anything you want on the muslin — like a ghost, a hand, a bat, or a Victorian-era person — and fill in the shape with paint. Let it try and then diffuse it with the organza. Place the figures in your home's windows and shine a light from the other side to create the shadow effect.

Another simple Halloween DIY, courtesy of Martha Stewart, that'd be a great decoration for your front yard or porch is a cheesecloth ghost. To make one, add a white cotton cheesecloth to a bowl with 1 part cornstarch and 2 parts water; this will make the cheesecloth starchy and eventually stiff. Next, take an empty bottle, such as a wine bottle, and use aluminum foil to make a ball for the opening and small arms for the neck. Then, open up the cheesecloth and lay it over the bottle to create a little ghost. Note that you'll need multiple layers so they drape well. When it's fully dry, pull the stiffened structure up and away from the bottle for your own freestanding DIY ghost.

Stewart's third Halloween décor idea is to create your own mad scientist's lab, starting with glow-in-the-dark glassware. For this one, take out the insides of highlighters and place them in big containers of water, like glass measuring cups; when you turn off the lights, the containers will glow in the dark. Be careful, though, as Stewart warns (via YouTube), "[T]his is not edible and it will stain things, so supervise the kids." Other ideas include an antacid lava lamp and using vegetables to look like stored body parts. A large head of cauliflower, for instance, can look like a brain, while grapes can stand in for spooky eyes.