Friday, October 12, 2018

Quick Craft: Spookify Your Candy Bowl For Halloween

This quick craft is SO quick I'm almost not sure it counts, but there's hot glue involved, so I guess I'll allow it. :D

Remember this floor lamp John disassembled for the Game Room makeover?

He removed the top half of the light since we never used it, so I turned the metal part into a display stand for our Sorting Hat.

That still left the plastic lamp shade on top left over, though, and here in the Yates household we aim to use ALL parts of the junk animal.

Sure, the shade had a big hole in the middle, but I figured it could made a good Halloween candy bowl. So I went to the dollar store and grabbed 3 plastic skulls, a rubber rat, and a strand of battery-operated lights:

 That's $5 in materials, plus some hot glue.

To do this yourself, you really just need a plastic bowl, the skulls, and hot glue. The rat and lights are optional. 

(Btw, "the rat and lights are optional" would be an amazing sentence to hear out of context. That is all. Carry on.)

Arrange the skulls in a nice tripod formation, then hot glue them to each other:

Now hot glue the bowl on top of the skulls.


Well, I also had to hot glue the rat into the middle of my bowl to cover the hole.


After that I arranged the light strand inside the bowl, covered it with cheap Halloween candy (because if we buy the good stuff this early I *will* eat it all), and bam. Now I'm done:

 I had the rat hold a lollipop for extra whimsy. Or menace. Honestly it could go either way.


Annnd there you have it: one upcycled lamp shade candy bowl!

If you have a few more minutes and really want to amp up the creep factor, then you can also follow my skull painting tutorial to make them look like this:

Dang that's creepy. I'd forgotten.

And that's the same dollar store skull! Just jazzed up with paint & metal doo-dads.

I was too lazy to paint these ones, though, so instead let's try a Grunge filter:

 Ooooh, so grungy.

You could also put that light strand through the skulls to light up their eyes, or cover them in rust, or glitter, or whatever your spoopy heart desires. Go nuts! Decorating is the fun part!

Speaking of, what Halloween crafts are you guys eyeing this month? I'm always looking for DIY inspiration this time of year, so if you've seen anything awesome, drop a link in the comments!


  1. I am coming Trick or Treating to your house. Plz to save all of the Tootsie Pops and Tootsie Rolls for ME!
    You can keep the rat and lights!

  2. Love it! That would be an interesting sentence to hear out of context. XD I'm making a bunch of your floating candles if I get time (they'll be lit for the halloween party and then left to enjoy through the holidays) Most of my crafting this year is costume wise as my littlest picked Metal Sonic and that's not something I can order/find in stores.

  3. "The rat and lights are optional" makes me think of our favorite game when we get out of our car in front of people.... You act like you are finishing a story with the most random sentence you can think of with a completely straight face and just walk away leaving them wondering........ A favorite is "and that's how I got addicted to crack!"

    1. We used to do that! Our favorite line was, "So I said to the man, 'it's YOUR penguin - YOU buy him a drink!' "

    2. We play a game on public transport that involves 'carrying on' a conversation, with an opening line that sounds as if you were mid-flow and just paused to get on. The trick is to keep it bizarre, to draw eavesdroppers in, but *still believable*. My favourite opening is "So how do you get yours clean?", which usually elicits details on some god-awful stuff your mum brews up on the stove that's nine part olive oil to one part motor oil and has to be scrubbed in with a silk rag and omg the *smell*...

    3. Love it! (The conversation mind games, that is)

    4. My brother and I used to do this: "...and we never saw grandpa again" was our favorite go-to. :D

  4. I also stand by the tootsie role and tootsie pop. I consider cheap candy more in the Smarties or sour dust straws genre.

  5. I personally need some “spoopy” lessons. Can you post a video for us pls? 🤣🤣🤣🤣

  6. I LOVE the word "spoopy"! I'm going to use it every chance I get for at LEAST the rest of the month!

  7. Have to make this one, our candy bowl is lame. Since you asked... I've been having lots of spooky fun with resin. I'm hooked on petri-resin-eyes at the moment, but my very favorite is turning photos of my kids in their halloween get-ups into wearables. How to's here: Petri-Eyes here: Keep'em coming Jen, you inspire us all!

  8. This was my Hallowe'en craft for the year, although I unveiled it early for Canadian Thanksgiving.

  9. We’ve just moved into our new (and final, thank-you-God-after-15-moves) house and honestly I had forgotten Halloween existed. Well, except for the the giant blow up dragon at Lowes that I’ve been campaigning for (who doesn’t need an 8’ dragon perched on their garage, I ask you?) We are on a rural road, so probably won’t get trick-or-treaters, but you never know!

  10. Have you seen the old broom sticks put on Roombas to make them look like they're moving themselves? Thought of y'all for both Halloween and your Potter Party

  11. You know what would be cool? Make that hole in the bottom bigger, and put a kind of a fabric sleeve on it to stick your hand through. You could maybe use a tube sock. Then you could really spook your trick or treaters when they reach in for candy, ha! Maybe just the older ones.

    I don't think I could ever actually do this, but it's fun to think about.

