If you’ve never tried squeegee painting before, Halloween is the perfect time to give it a go! With just a squirt of paint and a quick swipe, you can make ghosts magically appear on the page — no special painting skills required. Each pull of the squeegee creates a different ghostly shape, so every picture is full of fun surprises. You can create ghosts of all different sizes, and you can even experiment with different colours for a whole haunted cast of characters!
Once the paint dries, the fun continues! Add faces, backgrounds, or extra spooky details to bring your ghost scene to life. We added bats, trees, and even a tiny spider hiding in each picture for an extra Halloween twist. This ghost squeegee painting craft is simple, a little messy in the best way, and perfect for kids (and grown-ups!) who want to create their own one-of-a-kind Halloween art.
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How to Make Ghost Squeegee Art
Materials:
- Black cardstock
- Acrylic paint (white and colours)
- Fine tipped black marker
- Acrylic paint markers (gold and silver)
Equipment:
See the craft in action:
Instructions:
Step 1: Find what you need
- Gather your supplies and materials.
Step 2: Paint ghosts with a squeegee
- Start with a sheet of black or coloured cardstock. You can also use watercolour paper.
- Make an upside-down “U” shape with white acrylic paint. Wherever you put it will be the top of the ghost’s head.Younger kids may struggle with adding paint directly from the bottle. You can also use a paintbrush with a generous amount of paint to add this shape to the paper.
- Hold a squeegee above the paint and pull it down towards you. As you do this, push down with a bit of pressure.
- Clean the squeegee and repeat, adding 2 or 3 more ghosts to the paper at different heights.It’s okay if the ghosts overlap, and you can also create a wavy ghost by moving the squeegee from side to side as you pull it down.
Step 3: Add colour to the ghosts (optional)
- If you want your ghosts to have a bit of colour, add an upside-down “U” of coloured paint on top of where you started your first ghost. Use the squeegee to pull the paint down in the same way.
- Repeat with other colours of paint on the rest of the ghosts. If you made a wavy ghost, try to follow the same lines as much as possible.
- Then repeat again with another layer of white paint overtop. This makes the colours more muted.For the ghosts we made without colour we always did 2 layers of white paint, so they stood out more on the paper.
Step 4: Decorate your ghosts and background
- Use a black marker or drawing pen to outline the ghosts. Then draw different faces on each of your ghosts.
- Decide how you’d like to decorate the top of the paper. Here we used a silver paint marker to make a spider-web, with a black spider hanging from it, dangling onto the head of one of the ghosts.
- Then we used a gold paint marker to add “stars” to the sky. You can also use acrylic paint and a dotting tool.
- Your ghost squeegee painting is complete!
- Have fun making even more Halloween scrape art! You can change the number of ghosts, the size of them, and how you decorate the pictures. (Keep reading below for even more fun ideas!)
Helpful Tips:
- Play around with different colours and ghost shapes: Add colour to your ghosts, like we did in the tutorial, for a fun touch. You can also place the ghosts at different heights, make them varied widths, and add different numbers of ghosts to the picture.
- Paint didn’t come perfectly out of the bottle? Use a toothpick to smooth out the “U” shape. Or, if you don’t feel comfortable adding paint straight from the bottle, use a paintbrush!
Can I make ghost scrape art without a squeegee?
We definitely recommend getting a squeegee if you can — they’re easy to find at the dollar store, and the handle makes it much easier to control how your ghosts turn out.
But if you don’t have one on hand, there are some alternatives. A plastic ruler or an old gift card can be used to scrape the paint down the page. You can even use a piece of cardboard, though it smudges more easily and usually only works once or twice before it bends.
What paper is the best for making ghost squeegee paintings?
Watercolour paper is usually the best choice, since it’s designed to handle moisture and won’t warp when you add paint. The only drawback is that most watercolour paper is white, so for our ghost scrape art we chose coloured cardstock instead.
The most important thing is to use a thicker paper that can hold up to the paint without tearing. Even cardstock may curl a bit as it dries, but you can flatten it out again by placing your finished artwork under a heavy stack of books.
How else can I decorate my ghost squeegee art?
There are so many ways to make your ghost art unique! A spider web is always a fun addition, and we decided to hide a little spider in each of our pictures to tie them all together.
You can also add bats by printing our bat template at 25% scale and tracing them onto the paper. Painting a bare tree branch is another spooky option. For inspiration, you can check out the branches in our cherry blossom painting post.
And for an extra magical touch, we added glittery moons! Paint your moon with gold acrylic paint and then sprinkle fine gold glitter on top before the paint dries.
You can also add clouds, a shooting star, have a ghost hold a jack-o-lantern, draw a witch hat on one of the ghosts, etc. The fun ideas are endless!
Halloween crafts don’t get much more fun than this. It’s a little messy, a little spooky, and full of surprises with every swipe. These ghost squeegee paintings are the kind of project that kids will want to make again and again, because no two will ever turn out the same.
Display them on the fridge, use them as homemade Halloween decor, or simply enjoy the process of watching ghostly shapes come to life. It’s a craft that’s quick to set up, endlessly creative, and just the right mix of eerie and enchanting!
Here’s even more ghost craft ideas:
Now available
Low-Mess Crafts for Kids Book
72 cute and fun crafts that kids and parents alike can enjoy. All with as little mess as possible!
Where to buy:
You can purchase Low-Mess Crafts for Kids from Amazon, or wherever books are sold:
Amazon | Barnes and Noble | Books-A-Million | Indiebound | Amazon Canada
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