Better Bats!

Our church is gearing up for Trunk or Treat on Friday night and they asked my sister to help with a photo area and wall decorations.  She came up with the idea to do something with black silhouettes and bats and then promptly recruited me for the execution of the design.  I saw these swarming bats on a favorite blog years ago so I immediately understood the idea.

Searching for more bat images on Pinterest also revealed this similar idea from Country Living Magazine.  It was so nice that Jen and I both had access to similar picture sources via Pinterest.  The blog that posted the image on top also posted a bat pattern and tutorial, but that required cutting a TON of bat shapes.

I am still trying to finish my costume that I have to put on at 7am tomorrow and Jen has nursing school all day everyday, so I wasn't seeing us cutting out a ton of bat shapes.  Jen kept telling me about these easy bats she had seen on Pinterest.  She said they were just a piece of crepe paper streamers that had been tied in a knot to make a bat shape.  I couldn't picture it, and managed to not look it up prior to the agreed upon decorating day. I still can't really find the exact idea.  lots of different sites seem to have done bats out of grosgrain ribbon, but I can't seem to find many from crepe paper....until now!  Here is what we made with less than one roll of streamers!

I already had the witch silhouette.  I actually made that about ten years ago for my house in DC.  It happens to fit my windows in TN perfectly.  It is just white bulletin board paper that I taped to a wall of my classroom.  I turned on an overhead projector and had one of my students pose while I traced the shadow.  Later I painted it black.  They are starting to show there age so I will need to make some new ones soon.  You can see it illuminated in our windows during our Halloween party, posted here.

Ooops, off track again!  Back to the bats.  We already had the spooky silhouettes, so we just cut several long pieces of crepe paper streamers and then tied them with a knot in the center.

Then we made a loop of tape and stuck each bat to the wall.  I tried to arrange them so that it looked like a natural swarm.  The ones by the photo area are swarming out of the witches cauldron.  The rest swarm out of the corner of one door and the corner of one window.  I am SO impressed.  These were SO easy.  They took right at an hour, start to finish, to hang the silhouettes, make the bats and hang everything up.  This is the same large room that I have decorated for most of Lydia's birthdays and several other events and it always takes hours and hours.  I have to remind myself that these are JUST crepe paper streamers.  So EASY it is SCARY!

If you want more ideas for easy decorations with streamers or tissue paper click on the links!