Okay, okay I know that it is barely September but I can’t help but get excited when my second favorite holiday of all time is drawing near.  I love, love, love Halloween.  And for years I have made this Ghost Decoration, but I have always made them in white.  Well….this year I took things up a notch and decided to liven them up a little bit with some color and I love them! I think these ghosts are so impressive because they don’t look like they should be standing up on their own being made out of flimsy cheesecloth.   The process is super easy, and I love that I pretty much have everything that I need already at home.

What you will need to make these are:

• Cheesecloth
• Sugar
• Water
• Spray Paint, your choice of colors
• Glass bottles with long necks
• Black felt
• Foil

Decide on the size of your bottles and then take your foil and make a ball for the head.  Once you have made your ball, wrap it in a square piece of foil and crimp the bottom into a “stem”.

Insert the “head” into your bottle.

Next, take your foil and make a long “snake” for your arms.  I think I made mine about 20 inches long.  Crimp it together and wrap it around the neck of your bottle.  Bend the arms to where you want them.  I like mine not exactly level but with one arm higher than the other.  Don’t ask me why.

Okay, so now you want to cut your cheesecloth to be long enough to cover both sides of your side with some extra leftover to drape at the bottom which forms your stand.  I can’t really give the length since every bottle will be different so I just eyeball it.

Then you want to take 1/2 cup of water and 1 cup of sugar and bring to a boil.  Remove from heat.  Let it cool and when it is okay to touch, douse your cheesecloth into the sugar water.  Squeeze out the excess but not to a super, duper dry because you want some sugar to stay on the cheesecloth to harden.  This is what helps keep the ghost shape.

After squeezing, place your bottle on a piece of foil or wax paper and drape the cheesecloth over the ghost frame.

Layer the extra at the bottom thickly so that it will create a nice base.  Also, make sure you press down around the shoulder area so that your cheesecloth doesn’t go straight from the head to the arm. You want a nice shoulder area.

Let dry overnight.  When it is completely dry, spray paint with your choice of color.  The biggest thing that you need to do when spray painting these is to look at your ghost from every possible angle so that you can get spray paint into the folds with no white showing.  I sprayed the bottoms and up from the bottom into the inside.  Cut some eyes and mouths from the black felt and glue onto the ghost face.  Voila!  Don’t you just love these colors?

I already have these guys gracing my family room coffee table.

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