Mountain Dew Glowstick. For camping or late nights at the beach? Leave 1/4 of Mountain dew in bottle (just dont drink it all), add a tiny bit of baking soda and 3 caps of peroxide. Put the lid on and shake - walla! Homemade glow stick (bottle) solution.
Crafts
spiders: need 3 pipecleaners any color, but black looks best. Cut 2 in half, and hold in a row or as a bundle. Cut 3rd one in half, wrap one half around center of bundle. Arrange legs.
These can be made in varying sizes by adjusting the length of the cuts. Eyes can be added or not.
Spider web: Why buy it?!! Just pull apart a few cotton balls. String up just like you would the expensive store-bought stuff.
hanging ghosts: These can be made with varying degrees of complexity. Here's the 2 simplest versions:
Easiest: Take a tissue or plain white paper towel. Place a wad of the same (2 or 3 crumpled up) in the center. Fold whole/flat towel around wad. Tie at "neck". Leave extra string to hang with. Draw and mouth (if desired) with a plain black marker.
Medium: Take a square piece of white or grey cloth (sheer or cheese-cloth looks best). Place a white foam craft ball in the center, and fold cloth around it. Tie just below ball with clear jewelry string or fishing line. Glue on google eyes and/or buttons for eyes (and mouth if desired). (Make sure glue goes through cloth to ball. Hot glue works best.)
Halloween Crafts
Misc. Crafts
Christmas Crafts
Candy canes can be made by simply twisting one white and one red pipe cleaner together and bending top to hook.
Free, Easy Ornaments can be done by taking complimentary and/or damaged CDs and gluing odd bits of leftover string,
buttons, beads, etc to one or both sides and threading some string through the middle to hang them.
Cds can also be decorated with dried or fake leaves and berries to resemble wreaths
Make snowmen out of Styrofoam craft balls. Smaller one can usually be bought in multi-size packages of about 10-12. Cut small slice off bottom of largest ball to have a flat base. Use toothpicks (small) or pencil-thick wooden dowel pieces (large) to hold the balls together while glue sets. I recommend hot-glue (be careful not to get the gun to close to the foam), but craft-glue can be used too (just apply liberally as it tends to soak through the more porous foams). Glue on small buttons, google or rock eyes, fabric scrap scarf, etc. insert small found twigs as arms.
If you buy a live tree... many places will let you have the trimmings free or close to it. You can use these pieces to make garlands, swags, mantle pieces, and/or wreaths. Tie with thin twine or glue together.
Make your own wrapping paper out of flattened brown paper bags. Decorate with stamps, stickers, magazine pictures, holiday confetti, and even mini-ornaments.
Make your own personalized gift baskets cheap. Save unwanted baskets, bowls, tray, etc. from gift sets. Fill with free samples, dollar store items, and homemade crafts. Cover with colored saran wrap and tape shut on bottom. Can be customized for each person on your list! I usually do this for most of the adults on my list & it's always a big hit!!
A slightly more adult craft we have done a few times is to make our own ornaments out of salt dough. You can use cookie cutters or hand shape them for more personalized images. Just bake like cookies. I used a pencil (eraser side or unsharpened) to make the hole in the top with chain mail rings through them to hang with. They can be painted with just cheap dollar store acrylics or "tester" paints. I also used craft glue to put googly-eyes, buttons, etc. on some of them. They can be as simple or complex as you like. They make great, inexpensive homemade gifts too.
Salt Dough Recipe
1/2 cup of salt
1/2 cup of water
1 cup of flour