Smiley Bottle Ghosts

Smiley Bottle Ghosts

These ghosts need a little bit of adult preparation but with so many ways to decorate them the children will love getting creative and making their own unique ghost to hang up for Halloween.

You will need: An empty clear plastic bottle, wool or ribbon, scissors, sellotape, glue, googly eyes, kitchen roll, white tissue paper and coloured paper.

To make:
First the adult bit; make sure your empty clear plastic bottle is clean, dry and the labels have been removed. Using the drawing as a guide cut of the top and bottom ends of the bottle with scissors. On the base piece cut approximately 3cm slits all the way around the top edge. This allows you to make the base piece narrower at the top so that it can be pushed into the top piece creating a new shorter bottle. Sellotape the two pieces together at the join. Your ghost is now ready to be decorated and the fun starts.

Let the children decorate their ghost with whatever bits and bobs you have around the house. Here are two ideas that we have tried out at Oglee Poglee.

• Filling the bottle: Little hands love to poke things into small places so this activity is perfect. Take the lid off the bottle and let your child fill it with anything that will give the ghost a white appearance. White tissue paper, toilet paper and kitchen paper are perfect as they can be easy torn up into small bits and poked into the bottle. Provide a wooden spoon and the paper can be pushed down further into the bottle and more added. Cotton wool and bits of cut up wool also work well. For a bit of spooky sparkle you could also pop in some glitter, sequins and scraps of tin foil or shiny paper.

• Decorating the outside: Another way to decorate your ghost is to cover the outside of the bottle. We used strips of white tissue paper but newspaper, white paper and kitchen paper will also work well. Tear or cut strips of paper and glue them to the outside of your bottle. Adding a few longer strips will make the ghost look more like it is floating. The great thing about decorating the outside with paper is that when dry you can draw on, or continue to add bits to your ghost. We drew on spooky words like “Boo” and stuck on some silver stars.

Once your ghost is decorated secure the lid in place with some glue and allow it to dry. Now your ghost just needs a face. We used goodly eyes and a marker pen for the mouth but you could glue on eyes and a mouth cut from coloured paper or a magazine.

Using wool or festive ribbon tie a bow around the neck of the bottle and then you can hang your ghosts around the house. For a really cool effect why not put glow sticks inside an empty ghost bottle and hang your ghosts outside to light the way for trick or treaters.

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