Creepy Crafts ~ Abbie @ Greening with Sam and Avery

So excited for today's Guest Poster. Abbie from Greening Sam & Avery has put together a few really fun Halloween Crafts for your family. The best part of these creepy crafts is they are all eco-friendly. Abbie's blog Greening Sam & Avery focuses on a commitment she made to her two daughters to teach them how to love and respect the world they live in, and live a green life. During the process she decided to document it and share the tools she had with other parents out there so she could inspire green living where ever she could. Pretty cool if you ask me!

I can't wait til my little guys is old enough to do some of her up-cycling crafts!

Hello Mommy’s Lil Monster Bash participants and readers! Hello Family and Life in Las Vegas & The Life as a Sippy Cup Mom readers! And Hello to any other readers that might be stopping by! I am very excited to be contributing to this awesome blogging event.


Let me introduce myself a bit first. I am Abbie Enlund, author of Greening Sam and Avery. As a mom of two little ladies (Sam two and a half, and Avery 8 months) and an environmental educator I have an enormous amount of passion for the natural world. I want to make sure that my girls grow up with a real connection to the world around them and an appreciation that will help lead them to take care of the environment. My blog is where I share with all of activities, walks, games, crafts, books and anything else that I am using to help give them that appreciation.

Now on to the fun stuff!

We did three great eco-friendly Halloween crafts that I am excited to share with you all. These ideas came off of websites online, which of course now I cannot find or remember them all! But here is a great one if you want more ideas; Halloween Crafts.

The first craft that we did was a pumpkin craft made from egg cartons.

I started out doing some of the prep-work on my own, without Sam, because she is not that comfortable with scissors yet. I cut apart the egg cartons, separating each “egg cup”.

They start out looking like the one on the left and then you just have to cut off the excess and irregular shaped edges to get the little cup on the right. Once you have two of those you use hot glue to put them together.

This is the prep work that I did before Sam got involved.



I got four of these made and ready for painting for Sam and I to do the next day.

For the painting part I decided I wanted to make the pumpkins a little easier for Sam to hold so that she could hold it and paint at the same time. I took a food skewer and pushed it through one end of the pumpkin.

Sam was able to hold and paint. This was a huge help!

She is a little too young to understand the idea of covering the whole thing with paint but she did her best. I helped her with two so she could see the finished project and understand what we were making.

Once the paint dried all four pumpkins got green pipe cleaner stems. I took a small section of pipe cleaner and twisted it around the longer piece to make a leaf on the stem as well. Here are two of our finished products!

With older children you could draw jack-o-lantern faces on the pumpkins. Stickers could be added to decorate them as well.

I think these pumpkins would be cute strung together as a garland, hung by a string as an ornament or hanging decoration or filling up a basket or candy dish instead of candy!



Start saving those egg cartons!

The second project that we did required saving tin cans and a little muscle work from me! We made tin can lanterns.

A power drill is required for this one along with the tin cans. I worked on my own with the drill because Sam is still a bit too little for power tools, but I think it would be easy enough drilling for a slightly older child to get involved.


I used different sized drill bits to make different holes and stuck with random patterns. Someone more handy with a drill than me could make designs or even pictures with the holes! I made seven lanterns of varying sizes. Then Sam and I set out to paint them black.


Sam did well with the painting for a little while. Then she got frustrated with the few sharp/rough spots on the cans and had to start setting down the cans to paint them. Don’t worry they weren’t that sharp so it’s not like I was endangering her or anything!


There go those pants!

But we were able to get all the lanterns painted solid black and ready for candles.

Unfortunately, my little point and shoot camera would not let me take the picture with the flash off so you will just have to take my word that they looked cute and did cast a spooky light all over the sidewalk.


I think these will look great on Halloween. You could paint them any color, even stripes or pictures, or you can leave them all the silver color. These also don’t have to be just a Halloween craft could be used for any holiday or party.

The last project that we did was a special one so that Sam had a Halloween gift to take to her preschool teachers. I have a slight obsession with toilet paper tubes and finding all kinds of ways to reuse them. So this was right up my alley. We used toilet paper tubes and wrappers from Halloween chocolate candies. I took the wrappers, Sam helped me eat the chocolate which was a real hardship on her, and glued the wrappers to the outside of the toilet paper tube. Sam did the gluing and helped to paint on Modge Podge to seal the wrappers together. It took several layers and lots of Modge Podge. Then we filled the tube with candy.



I used saran wrap around the tube and candy to hold the candy in. Then we twisted the ends and tied with ribbon.



I love crafts that I can do without having to buy anything and for this we had all the supplies. Now they would probably be cuter with some kind of Halloween ribbon, which I may still go and buy when it gets closer to Halloween. We could also use colored saran wrap to make it even more festive. The candy wrapper decoration on the tube could also be changed to stickers, tissue paper or any other kind of paper that you wanted to use. But doesn’t it make a pretty cute way to bring a little extra candy to a special friend or teacher?


These are three great ways to bring some reusing to your Halloween festivities. Hopefully I have inspired you with one of these great eco-friendly, reuse it crafts! If you need more inspiration for everyday crafts like these be sure to stop by my blog, Greening Sam and Avery.

I love all those ideas, but I have to say the Lanterns are my personal favorite! I bet they just look amazing at night! If you go over and "Green" her blog, and leave a comment saying you're from Mommy's Lil Monster Bash you can have 4 extra entries into any giveaway.

Just comment with "I went Abbie's Blog and came back greener." on the giveaway of choice. (4 separate comments) (Divide them up, use them all for one giveaway, it is your call!!)

And don't forget you can vote on Top Mommy blogs and Picket Fences Daily for 2 extra entries per vote.

And keep your eye's peeled - I will be handing out extra entries EVERYDAY. On Twitter, On The Blog. You won't want to miss your extra chance to win some of your favorite giveaways.

It just may be a Green Halloween!

Don't forget to enter some of the 20 Giveaways that are going on until October 9th before you leave. See the SideBar for links to each Giveaway!!