It’s that time of year again: Time to decorate your yard for a backyard Halloween party. Your backyard is a blank palette, and you want to make it as spooky as possible. To help you do so, here are some great backyard Halloween decoration ideas:
1. Graveyard Entrance
Nothing is quite as chilling as a graveyard. If you have a trellis over the entrance to your yard or garden, you’ve already got a great starting point for your graveyard entrance. Simply hang a sign with the word “cemetery” or “graveyard” from the top of the trellis and adorn the trellis with fake vines and other decorations that will make it seem old and spooky. Then you just need to place fake gravestones throughout your yard and garden, and you’ve got a cemetery for your guests to explore.
2. Floating Ghosts
Anyone can put flat ghosts on the wall, but you can make some creepy 3D ghosts for your yard if you really want to spook up your party.
You have a couple of great options for your ghosts, depending on how much effort you wish to put into the project. This simple DIY ghost project just requires some balloons, string, and cheesecloth. All you have to do is drape the cheesecloth over the balloon, tie the string around the end of the balloon, and then hang the ghosts from your pergola or trees. You can draw some faces onto the ghosts if you’d like.
This more complicated DIY ghost project allows you to make full-sized ghosts that will haunt your yard. This one requires you to form the body using chicken wire and then drape the cheesecloth over it.
3. Spiders and Spider Webs
Fake cobwebs are never hard to find around Halloween. Draping this material across the side of a pergola, an arbor, or your house gives you a good place to set up your spiders. Remember that the bigger the spider, the scarier it is.
4. Black Cats with Piercing Eyes
Anyone can buy black cat silhouettes, but why not go a step further with a cheap and easy creepy cat project. All you’ll need is some pumpkins, cucumbers, black paint, and a few other easily obtainable supplies. These step-by-step instructions will help you create these spooky critters.
5. Staring Eyes
It’s pretty unsettling to turn your head and find unexpected eyes peering at you. To create these eyes, you just cut some eyes into a toilet paper roll, insert a glow stick, and hide your creation in a bush.
6. Spider Sac
Do you really want to feed off people’s arachnophobia? There’s no better way than to add a spider sac to your spider webs. Most people are scared of finding a million baby spiders spilling out from someplace, and that’s exactly what this emulates. Just looking at the pictures featured on these step-by-step instructions may make you shudder.
7. Flameless, Illuminated Jack-o-Lanterns
No matter how scary the face is that you carve into a pumpkin, its effect just isn’t what you’d like when it’s lit by a weak flame. A cluster of pumpkins lit up very brightly, however, will be eye-catching and spooky.
Get a string of LED Christmas lights with a high wattage and a bunch of smaller pumpkins. You’ll need to carve out the pumpkins from the bottom instead of the top in order to make this project work. You can carve out faces, but pretty much any shape will make this decoration stand out.
Wherever you want the pumpkins to be – whether along a pathway or in another space – is where you’ll put the Christmas lights. Then you’ll place the pumpkins over the bulbs. The high wattage lights will shine through brightly, making these decorations incredibly eye-catching. If you’re interested in completing this project, here are the step-by-step instructions.
The best way to make these decorations work is to have pathways, pergolas, trellises, and other landscaping features to decorate. To get these elements in your yard, contact Landscape By Design. Their landscape designers will create a backyard that stands beautifully on its own and also supports decorations well.