How to Make a Spooky Ghost (on a budget)

Remember those outdoor curtains I bought from Ikea that I thought looked like a wedding veil and then bought dye only to realize I couldn’t dye polyester? Well, I finally found a use for them! A spooky ghost!

All I needed was a pair of Ikea Lill curtains, a balloon, a sharpie marker to draw on a scary face and fishing line to hold it all together. Since I already had the curtains and supplies this was free for me, but anyone could make this for super cheap since the curtains are $4 a pack.

First I drew a face on the balloon (make sure to do it upside down for easy hanging). If I could do it over I might have used an orange balloon for a pumpkin head or a white balloon for a ghost head, but I was going for a bogeyman look with the glowing neon green. Oliver really liked the scary face (he totally “helped” - hence the smear on the ghost’s cheek) so we went with that, but one could totally make it a happy ghost to be more kid friendly.

To hang it, I tied fishing line to the end of the balloon, then poked the fishing line through the center of the first curtain (since it’s mosquito netting it’s full of holes). I used a small piece of fishing line to gather the fabric underneath the balloon as a “neck” and tied it off. Then I pushed the hanging piece of fishing line through the center of the second curtain, so there were two layers.

Outside I hung the ghost on a tree. I pulled up a piece of fabric from the outer layer on both sides to look like ghost arms and secured those to the tree with more fishing line. It was really easy and Oliver loves it. I have to admit when the wind blows it moves around a lot in a ghostly way and looks just as nice (if not better) than a lot of the ghosts from the store.