Halloween Theme Leaf Painting
- Mom of 2
- Oct 15, 2024
- 4 min read
Cozy up with your little one this fall with this adorable Halloween craft! Paint fall leaves into spooky cute bats, ghosts and zombies.
Materials
Leaves
Paint (white, black, green)
Googly Eyes
Glue for Googly Eyes
Black Sharpie (or paint for the mouths)
Step 1:
First, for this spooky cute craft, have your little pumpkin gather a vartiety of dry fall leaves from outstide.
My child enjoyed filling a bag (paper or plastic whatever you have) with colorful fall leaves. If you don't have a bag for leaves, grab a beach bucket, cardboard box (maybe a recent Amazon delivery), or even a plastic kitchen bowl.
The more leaves, the better! Your child will be happy to pick which leaves to paint.
Step 2:
Set up a safe cozy spot to paint the leaves! I like to minimize the risk of paint getting on clothes, furniture and the floor.
OK, so you probably want to use Tempura paint because it's washable. I have a ton of acrylic craft paint that I'm trying to use up, so we used acrylic paint for this craft. Beware, acrylic paint isn't washable and will stain everything (talk about scary).
Here are some tips for setting up a safe space to paint with a little one:
Line the table or floor with whatever you have!
Seriously, cover the area with whatever you have to protect your home from paint & water spills; cardboard, newspaper, cheap plastic table cloth, paper grocery bags, paper yard bags.
Use a cardboard box from your recycling pile as a tray to paint in.
Using a box as an activity tray, contains the mess within the four sides of the box. In the picture, you can see that I cut the sides of the box, so that my child could more easily paint the leaves.
Use a spill-proof paint water cup!
I love our Melissa & Doug Spill Proof Paint Cups. These cups are less tippy than plastic throw away cups and the special lid stops the water from pouring out if the cup is knocked over.
I've seen similar spill-proof designs at Dollar Tree, Walmart, and Amazon.
Have your child wear a smock!
Wearing a smock will greatly reduce the risk of paint getting on clothes.
Grab an old large t-shirt (we tend to grab my husband's old undershirts to use as smocks) and have your child wear it over their clothes. An adult size shirt covers my kids pretty good.
You can find child size aprons at Dollar Tree or online, but aprons won't cover your child's arms or sleeves. The apron my son is wearing in the above picture has sleeves...I can't remember exactly where we bought it. I think the apron is from Ikea.
Use paper plates or cardboard as a paint palette.
Use throw away cardboard or paper plates as a paint palette.
You'll be able to easily toss the palette of unused paint in the trash at the end of the craft. Kids tend to mix the paint colors together, so I recommend using one paint color per piece of cardboard or paper plate.
Step 3:
Now that you have a well-protected space to paint, get started painting your leaves.
Group your leaves into piles for the ghosts, bats and zombies. It'll be easiest to paint all of the ghosts together (that way you are using one paint color at a time and one brush at a time) before moving on to painting all of the bats together and then all of the zombie leaves together.
If you are using maple leaves for the bats, clip the middle of the leaf into two bat ears.
We used white paint for the ghosts, black paint for the bats and green paint for the zombies.
Step 4:
Glue googly eyes onto your leaves. It doesn't matter if you wait for the paint to dry or not. My son glued the googly eyes right onto the wet paint with white Elmers glue.
Step 5:
After your leaves have dried, use a black Sharpie marker to draw mouths onto the ghosts and zombies.
You can paint little white fangs onto your bats. We opted to make our bats with just googly eyes.
Be gentle drawing on the dried leaves. I noticed when my son drew the mouths on the zombie's with a marker, that the leaves made crinkly sounds. I was worried he was going to poke a hole into the dried leaves, but he did not and all was well.
I hope you enjoy this cozy fall craft with your kids as much as I did!
Our leaves turned out so creepy cute that we are using them as Halloween decorations and gifts (packed some leaves up for grandparents and teachers).
My plan is to make more Halloween theme leaves for a Halloween wreath and I'll also try framing a scary little leaf into an inexpensive frame as a gift idea. I'll update this post with pictures and information when I'm done.