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Glowing Ghost Craft for Kids

Glowing ghost craft

Here’s a special Halloween decoration you can make with your kids--real glowing ghosts! Bonus: because these are powered by glow juice they can be hung anywhere, no electricity or batteries required!

First, this craft is a spin on the glowing luminaries we made with jars and flameless (battery) candles.

You’ll need:

  • One clear Christmas ornament per ghost (plastic is safer)
  • Permanent marker
  • Black sticky back foam (we used glitter foam)
  • Cheese cloth
  • Glow Sticks
  • Scissors and hole punch (optional)
  • String to hang

I found my supplies at Michaels (except for the glow sticks, those are from the dollar bin elsewhere). They have plastic Christmas ornaments right now in lots of sizes. Plastic ornaments are really better than glass if you want kids decorate the ghosts.

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Decorate the ornament however you like. We used a hole punch to punch out small circles from the glitter foam to make a surprised ghost face. You can also use a permanent marker.

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Mitch turned one into a puppy, as I pointed out a while back. As you can see, if you use sticky back foam the craft is super easy for little kids–no glue required!

Next drape a length of cheese cloth over the ornament. I used about a square foot, but you can use however much you like. Poke the top of the ornament wire through the middle of the cheese cloth.

Trim with scissors. We hacked a few cuts into the bottom of our ghost to make it more tattered and spooky.

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Run a piece of string through the hanger. We used fishing line, which is invisible. Ghosts like that. At this point you have a daytime ghost you can hang anywhere.

For a spooky glow just add glow juice! (This step is for the grown ups.) Pull back or remove the cheese cloth and take off the top of the ornament. Take a glow stick and snap to activate. Break it several times or you’ll end up with a big tube of glass in your ghost (look at the top photo and you’ll see what I mean.) Then use scissors to CAREFULLY cut off the end of the stick. You might want to do this over a sink. Pour the glow juice inside your ornament. Reassemble the ghost and hang somewhere dark.
Note: we used two bracelet sized glow sticks in our ghost. The thinner bracelets are easier to cut open than a fat glow wand. Glow sticks are non-toxic, but you still don’t want to drink it. I know–I tried to cut open both ends of the stick and then blow the juice out like a straw…and…just yuck. Don’t do that. Really. Don’t.
Of course the glow will only last as long as the glow juice, which is about 8 hours. You’ll need to add fresh glow juice if you want to light up the ghost more than one night!