Ghosts and Halloween Characters Made from Coffee Filters

My mother-in-law bought the wrong size cone-style coffee filters for her coffee pot and then two weeks later I bought the wrong size filters too. We both needed size #4 but we bought size #6 and #2. She gave me her #6 filters thinking I could create a craft with them. I accepted her challenge and below are directions to make Coffee Filter Halloween Characters that stand up on their own!

The #6 cone-style coffee filter would become the halloween character, but I used the smaller #2 size filter to prevent black marker from bleeding through to the other side. I just slipped the smaller filter inside the bigger one.

The first character I made was a Frankenstein Monster. I cut parts of the edge to create the bolts in his neck. Be careful not to cut too much of the edge. You want your filter to stay intact.

I used permanent Sharpie markers to draw the face.

I made a jack o'lantern, vampire, ghost, and werewolf too.

I was so excited that I forgot to take a picture of how I colored the filters. I used a washable Crayola markers and colored the coffee filter where I wanted color. I just put a little bit of red for the vampire's teeth!

Then, I took the filters outside and sprayed them with Niagara spray starch. The filters rested on Solo cups to dry.

I am the author of THREE GHOST FRIENDS: LEARN ABOUT COLORS. A fun non-scary ghost book for younger children. I thought this craft would be perfect for my book too. 

All you need is the book (paperback or eBook), three coffee filters with ghost faces, and red/blue/yellow Crayola markers to begin.

Later, you will need the Solo cups and Niagara spray starch.

This proved to be a fun way to act out the book too. My daughter stacked the THREE GHOST FRIENDS just like the book.

Early in the story the ghosts see a banana, a blueberry, and a strawberry. The ghost that eats the banana turns yellow. The ghost that eats blueberry turns blue and the ghost that eats the strawberry turns red. My daughter immediately wanted to color the coffee filters.

Red ghost!

She quickly colored both sides of the filters.

She was able to act out the ghosts dancing just like the book!

After the book, she sprayed the colored coffee filters with the starch. Make sure you have newspaper down because they will drip.

It took a few hours to dry.

Here are our Halloween Characters once they were ready. 

They turned out awesome! My daughter thought they would be cool puppets!

The THREE GHOST FRIENDS turned out great too!

Check out all the THREE GHOST FRIENDS books on Amazon! If you can't wait for paperback and want to try it today....download the ebooks for Kindle or iPad/iPhone!