Eerie Free Standing Ghost Decoration

This simple, family-friendly Halloween decoration, is a fun project to do with your kids while still being legitimately creepy. And you probably have a lot of the materials already laying around!

• Large tote for mixing plaster
• Plaster of Paris (25 lb bag)
• Water - for mixing the plaster
• Rubber gloves (it's easiest to just mix with your hand, but a paint mixer would work too)
• Canvas drop cloth - there are a lot of sizes, but make sure one of the dimensions is at least 8-9 ft long
• Scrap wood - to use for a flat base while plaster dries (and usually won't stick to)
• Buckets (2 - 4) - Large garbage cans could also work -- these buckets create the "body frame" of the ghost form
• Soccer ball/Basketball - This will be the section of the frame that creates the ghost's head
• Battery-powered tea lights - to illuminate the ghost shape if you like this look

To start, mix up your plaster. (This is a fun to do with kids, as long as they're prepared to shower immediately after finishing the project.)

Pour in the entire bag of plaster of Paris into the large tote for mixing. Slowly add water, and mix with your gloves on, until you reach the consistency of a thick melted milk shake.

Now dunk your canvas drop cloth into the plaster slurry until it is completely covered and soaked through with plaster. If the plaster is too thick to moisten the canvas through, add more water at this step. Keep agitating the canvas blanket, until completely covered. It's important to keep lifting it up and letting it slop down to get between all the creases. This is the part that gets messy and will require showers to get all the little plaster speckles off!

Place your scrap plywood flat on the ground (We didn't do this step and the plaster base dried on the grass, and it made moving the finished product much more difficult. I highly recommend putting down plywood below your frame!)

On the plywood, you're going to alternatingly stack your buckets or large trash cans as high as you'd like the ghost to stand. Make sure you build it short enough though, that the drop cloth can blouse at least 3 feet on the ground for it's base. (So if you have a 9 foot drop cloth, I wouldn't go taller than 6 feet tall for the frame (including the height of the soccer ball for the head))

***Side note: I used buckets and we didn't tape the buckets together on this step. It would have probably made the next step much easier though; so you may consider duct taping them together at the joints, or just using a single large trash can***

Finally, on top of the buckets, place the basketball or soccer ball (or any other orb-esque thing you have laying around) for the head shape for the ghost. (If this is a ball you plan to use again, I would cover it entirely in saran wrap.)

This completes the ghost frame building step.

This is the hardest part, because the weight blanket with plaster is HEAVIER than you think. Pull out the blanket, from the slop, and then drape it over the frame you made in the previous step. While wet and still pliable, maneuver the front of the ghost shape, so only a moderate opening exists (like the slight opening of a creepy robe).

You want to drape the "head" portion to look like a realistic, flowing hood shape.

And at the bottom, blouse out the blanket to make a circular shaped flowing dress look. This will double in function to form the base of the finished product, so make sure it is laid out with a pretty decent amount of surface area. About 3-4 times the width of the body portion should be plenty to hold up the finished product.

After 36-48 hours to be safe, check to ensure the ghost shape is completely hard and formed. Next, either pull apart the buckets and/or pull out the soccer ball if possible. You may have to lift the entire ghost up and off of the frame, if you can't disassemble the frame from inside the form. Luckily the plaster and blanket, are MUCH lighter in this dried state, but having two people on this step may be easiest.

It may feel pretty rigid at this step, but you can't be too aggressive with maneuvering the ghost or it will start to crack and crumble. You can usually feel out how resilient it will be pretty early on though.

Now lift up your ghost from the head portion (like your pushing your fist up through the cape of the hood). Move it to a place on your porch or front yard where you think it looks the most imposing.

From here, you can decorate however you like. The look we preferred, however, was minimalist (no decorations), with only a tea light at the base to illuminate the interior. You could also glue it up into the hood, if you don't want people to see the light source.

We put ours on our porch, and it's fun to watch peoples' reactions on the ring doorbell camera!