If you’re looking for a cute Halloween craft for the kids (that you’ll actually want to keep!) then look no further than these adorable DIY Halloween pendant necklaces!
After seeing how much my kids (and my readers!) loved the camping necklaces, I knew I wanted to create something similar and just as fun for Halloween.
However, I’m really bad at all forms of art (sculpting stuff from clay is definitely on the least) and Halloween decor tends to be a little more detail oriented. Skeletons, spiders and bugs, are all pretty intense compared to triangular mountains and rectangular graham crackers!
I started brainstorming, and thought about how much my kids LOVE to make impressions of stuff in playdoh just to see what it looked like. Then I jumped to those little dollar tree plastic bags of bugs and spooky things I get every year. Thankfully, I store extras (who doesn’t go buy a ton of decor once the holiday is over and it’s all on 90% clearance!) and was able to make these cute necklaces!
As I write this, my kids are STILL wearing them!
What you’ll need for this kids Halloween DIY
This can really be as fancy or easy as you want it! To make it easier for the younger crowd, try using stamp pads and markers to color it in (roll the whole front in the stamp pad, and ask them to trace all the impressions with marker)
For the older kids, have fun trying to paint in details or add special things like hot glue or other accents (my spider actually has a glob of hot glue with some red sequins for a black widow feel)
All you really need is some oven bake clay, string, and something to color it in with.
Also, because I was asked on my camping necklace DIY… can you use play doh?
Well, it certainly won’t last as long, and of course has a much MUCH higher
“cure time”… but if you don’t want to get the clay and don’t mind throwing it away in a week or two when it gets wrecked, go for it! It is definitely alot more common to have laying around!
Let the play doh dry for two days or so atleast so that it is hard enough to work with and paint.
Anyways, here’s how to make it!
DIY Halloween Kids Necklace Craft (Cheap and FUN!)
Make a cute Halloween craft with your kids that they'll love, you'll want to keep, and best of all.. is pretty darn cheap!
Materials
- Various Halloween themed small plastic toys
- Sculpey Clay (or any oven bake clay would work I assume)
- String (cotton yarn is good!)
- Paint
- Beads (optional)
Tools
- Oven to bake your Halloween Pendants
Instructions
- Work the clay a bit and flatten it into a 1/4" ish piece. Each pendant is about as tall as your pinkey and half as wide, so flatten out as much clay as you need.
- Cut oval shapes out of your flattened clay. I used a kids little medicine cup to get a good shape (the ones that come with kids tylenol - squish it into an oval)
- Press in whatever shapes you want. The ones with the least depth work best as you only got 1/4" of clay to press into.
- Poke a hole into the top of the pendant. I just used a pipe cleaner, but many things will work for this.
- Cook according to your brand of clays instructions. Mine was 15 minutes at 275 F. I lined my baking sheet with parchment paper just in case they stuck or picked up any stuck on junk from the baking sheet.
- Once done cooking and cooling, decorate! Depending on the age of your kids, you might want to use markers as it's easier to color something so small. I personally used a thing black marker to fill in intricate stuff like spider legs and skeleton eyes, but being real, it will be fine if your kiddo just colors the whole thing green! You'll still be able to see the impressions.
- Thread a string through the hole (use a push pin to help the string through if your hole is small). I tied it once on to make it lay more flat once worn.
- Add any beads you want and.... done! (I added some modge podge to seal everything and make it shiny, but that's definitely not necessary)
How did your Halloween necklace turn out? Any questions about mine?
I hope yours turned out just as special! My kids love theirs and they seemed to have held up to quite a bit of dropping and smacking thankfully.
If you have a picture of yours, I’d love for you to send it to me so that I can add it to this article!
Here are some more Halloween and fall kid crafts you’ll love!
- Encourage exploration and observation in your child by giving them their very own fall pocket journal!
- Make a crunchy leaf pumpkin to celebrate fall at the same time!
- Enjoy 3 different ways to celebrate fall with the family using these fall game sheets!
- Play a fun spider web game inspired by Eric Carles “The Very Busy Spider” (while practicing fine motor skills at the same time!)
- Apples are a fall favorite, but the worms do get some of them! Don’t waste the bad ones – make a fun apple pumpkin stamp instead!
- Check out the 8 funnest fall activities to do with your kids!
- Make an easy fall paper plate wreath with your kids to celebrate the season!
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