Ghostly Frights For Halloween Nights [Hardcover]

Shauna Mooney Kawasaki (Author)

Book Description

Which do kids love most--to scare others or be scared themselves? Either way, turn your home, indoors and out, into the neighborhood fright-night center. Fast and simple projects are easy to put up, take down, and store. Make them yourself or invite the kids to help. The windows of your front door become a goblin's glowing, glaring eyes, then add a malevolent toothy grin dripping with blood. A porch post is the perfect place to hang a Grim Reaper with papier-maché skull and gold-foil scythe, where the breeze will blow him to and fro. You can even make jack-o'-lanterns out of painted stones that no vandal can smash. Indoors, projects abound to create a truly haunted house!

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Filled with the requisite bats, skeletons, pumpkins, and lots of ghosts, Ghostly Frights for Halloween Nights offers dozens of projects to bedeck house and garden for a month of spooking. Wooden-spoon-face ghouls dressed in glittery fabric scraps cluster among dead leaves in the front yard. Papier-mâché spheres shaped over balloons become a bat piñata, an owl lantern, or skull-headed maracas. Kids can help with some of the easiest projects, or they can enjoy the fruits of grownups' labor by counting down to the big day with an October version of the advent calendar, or play Dr. Frankenstein by reassembling a brightly colored monster body. The sometimes-murky directions and occasionally confusing (though graphically appealing) illustration diagrams are generally clarified by the color photos of the finished products, and most of the projects are fairly simple anyway. With the exception of the more-complex stitching projects (stuffed chameleon, peek-a-boo quilt, witch doll), novices should be able to handle most of these items. --Amy Handy

Product Details

• Hardcover: 96 pages
• Publisher: Sterling/Chapelle (December 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0806958294
• ISBN-13: 978-0806958293
• Product Dimensions: 11 x 8.7 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,175,084 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful photos....but the crafts...???, October 20, 2002

By 

Helen Clark "Red1332" (PA, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ghostly Frights For Halloween Nights (Hardcover)

I bought this book at a deep discount thinking I would be able to whip up all kinds of wonderful Halloween spooky things to decorate my house with. The pictures on the front cover looked promising.
However, when I opened it up and looked inside, I realized that a lot of the crafts were very cheap. And I don't mean cheap as in money wise. I mean as in cheaply made, that they were not likely to last more than one season. It's my thought that if you put time and effort in to a display, you should be able to reuse it!
Another thing was the inclusion of wierd things like a pattern for a chameleon. Lizards in general are scary, but isn't Halloween usually reserved for snakes and toads? I don't find chameleons too intimidating, personally.
And a third thing was the bits of information in the book about the holiday...a few were incorrect, or were based on popular assumptions and not on actual research. Being that I'm a Halloween buff, I've researched this stuff so I know it's wrong, but maybe other people don't care that much. If not, the blurbs of info are entertaining.
I'm keeping the book because it has 3 or 4 really cute projects that would come out nicely, and the pictures are great for other ideas (One gave me the idea to create a spooky birdcage with a raven in it.)
All in all...it's a good one to supplement if you have several other books on Halloween decorating, but I wouldn't suggest this be your only book.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Nothing new here, July 12, 2003

By 

Tracy Hoffmann (Downingtown, PA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Ghostly Frights For Halloween Nights (Hardcover)

The book is cleverly laid out, with good illustraions and cute cartoons, but the craft ideas are really lame. If you're looking for interesting or unusual ideas, try Hocus Pocus: Halloween Crafts for a Spooktacular Holiday by Martingale and Company. Everything from invitations to decorations and food.

3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Original Country Ideas, January 25, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Ghostly Frights For Halloween Nights (Hardcover)

Well written, cute illustrations. Lots of beautiful photographs. This book is aimed towards the halloween Crafter. Many cute ideas that could be modified or expanded upon for details in the corners of your home haunt. Not a book for the serious hard-core haunter.