3D Printed Halloween Decorations

My wife and kids love decorating for Halloween, so when my first 3D printer arrived, I decided to make some decorations for our home. The attached files are multipurpose and can be scaled to 50% of the original size to attach to string lights as a Halloween garland, or printed full-size and used as light-up decorations indoors or outside.

My favorite part of this project was brainstorming ideas with my family before modeling the items together. Painting the figures was also a blast, and I can easily see these coming out every October for years to come.

Halloween colored outdoor string lights.

3D printer

Primer (optional)

Paint

Cotton balls

Hot glue gun

Import the .STL files into your preferred CAD program and scale the characters to your needs. The default proportions are large enough for one bulb from the strand. As you can see in the pictures in later steps, I chose to enlarge the holes in the back of each model so that I could push in multiple lights from the strands.

Import your updated models into a splicer program to finalize preparations for printing. Make sure to enable support structure while printing each object. This was our first attempt at modeling and there is quite a bit of overhang on some of the pieces.

Bonus decoration:

I found that the tree support left behind what can be used as actual trees to increase the spooky factor of the objects. What is scarier than a (B+R)at tower over the trees?

When printing Frank the first time, I decided to cancel the print at around 40% to create an extra character for the final scene. The plan was to place him upside-down in front of the tombstone. This led to the idea that the other models were coming to visit Frank 1.0 for Halloween.

Remove the supports from each print. They break away fairly easily, but I found that using a small hex key for leverage made cleanup much easier.

This print produced some great “tree” pieces to add to the final product. The interior supports were harder to remove but created nice, bush-like details.

We had a lot of fun painting these prints. Everyone chose one to work on and dove right in. We used inexpensive acrylic paints from Walmart, and as you can see, there wasn’t much of a cohesive plan—just the goal of having fun.

Frank needed about three coats for a good finish. We used black paint for touch-ups and to hide our less-than-perfect brushwork.

We used a spare piece of wood from the shed to glue down each figure so the tension in the string lights wouldn’t shift their final positions. We also hot-glued the lights into the models.

Since there were extra bulbs between each model, we used cotton balls to make glowing “clouds.” My youngest daughter wasn’t thrilled with the paint job on the bat, so we added a powdered wig using a cotton ball—problem solved!

Enjoy your finished creation! We set ours on the front porch by the door, and it’s been a big hit with visitors.