Scrapbook & Cards Today Blog: Halloween Countdown with Aly Dosdall!

My kids’ favourite holiday (except for Christmas, of course) is Halloween. They look forward to it all year long talking about what they’ll dress up as and planning how they’ll get the candy mother load. So this year we decided to make a Halloween Countdown to help us get ready. It never hurts to start the celebration a little early, right?

Supplies: patterned paper, letter and number stickers, chipboard shapes, embossed stickers, die cuts, brads (We R Memory Keepers); fine point pen (Sharpie); craft knife (Making Memories); foam adhesive squares (Scrapbook Adhesives by 3L); 12 x 12 frame (Michael’s)

For this project you’ll need the following:

One 12 x 12 haunted house patterned paper
Four semi-solid patterned papers (or cardstock)
Letter and number stickers
Brads
Various embellishments (chipboard shapes, stickers, die cuts, etc.)
Craft knife and mat
Fine tip pen
Foam adhesive squares
12 x 12 frame

Here’s how I made this countdown:

First I cut the haunted house out because I wanted to mount it on a darker background to look more like night time.

Next, I used a craft knife to cut out all of the doors and windows to create 30 openings in the haunted house.

Then I backed the cut out openings with semi-solid patterned paper so I could write a fun fall/Halloween activity in each one. (See the end of the post for a downloadable list of activity ideas.) I used four different colors—one for each level of the haunted house. *Tip: when you write the activity be sure to leave some room at the top for the brad.

I re-attached the doors/windows to cover the activities written in the openings using brads. Then I added number stickers on the doors/windows from 1-30 starting at the top. You can see in the above photo how the door can swing open to reveal the special activity for each day.

Once all the openings were ready, I mounted the haunted house on some background paper using foam adhesive squares to give it some dimension. Then I added some embellishments to give it a really spooky Halloween feel. Last, I placed it in my 12 x 12 frame leaving the glass out so we can open the appropriate door for each day in October.

My girls and I had so much fun coming up with activities, and they have had a blast opening a door each day to see what activity we do to get ready for Halloween. You can download a list of the activities we have on our countdown HERE. Give this idea a try, and have a Happy Halloween!

~ Aly Dosdall