How to Decorate Brown Bags for Halloween

Make your own Halloween trick-or-treat bags with a few basic materials.

Brown lunch bags have numerous uses in addition to carrying food to school or work. For example, you can turn them into Halloween decorations. Children can also use decorated bags to take holiday treats to their classmates. Unadorned, brown paper lunch bags don't exactly scream Halloween, but wait till you see what a little holiday-themed jazzing up can do for them.

Things You'll Need

• Newspaper
• Rubber band
• Paintbrush
• Tempera paint (orange, brown, black)
• Construction paper (black, white)
• Scissors
• Glue
• Googly eyes

Instructions

Pumpkin Decoration

1. Scrunch several sheets of newspaper into a ball and place them inside a brown paper bag.

2. Wrap a rubber band around the top of the brown paper bag to set off the plump bottom. This is the base of your pumpkin decoration.

3. Paint the area below the rubber band with orange tempera paint, to look like a pumpkin. Paint the area above the rubber band with brown tempera paint, to look like a stem. Let the paint dry completely.

4. Cut shapes out of black construction paper to create a jack-o-lantern face for your paper pumpkin. You'll need two eyes, a nose and a mouth. Glue them in place.

Treat Bags

1. Paint a brown paper lunch bag orange or black. Use orange to make it look like a pumpkin and black to make it look like a bat or a spider. Let the paint dry completely.

2. Glue a pair of googly eyes to the front of the treat bag.

3. Cut a nose and a mouth out of black construction paper and glue them onto the pumpkin treat bag. Cut a mouth with fangs out of white construction paper for a bat treat bag or a mouth with a smile shape for a spider treat bag. Glue the features to the bag to complete the design.

4. Add finishing touches to your Halloween treat bag. Make a pair of black wings cut from construction paper for a bat bag. Staple or glue the wings to spread out from the back sides of the bag. Paint white lines on a spider bag to resemble a spider web. Paint green leaves and a brown stem onto a pumpkin bag.

Tips & Warnings

• As an alternative to newspaper, you can fill your paper pumpkin decoration with popcorn.

• Painting can be quite messy, especially for kids, so dress them in smocks to protect their clothes.

References

• Peltzer Farms; Pumpkin Bag; Judy Press
• Parents; Halloween Party Activities & Crafts; Heidi Palkovic, et al.