Incorporate the celebration seating in your Halloween home decor by dressing the chairs up in cute or scary covers fitting to the occasion. You can use cheap pillowcases or felt sheets since the basic cover stuff, without any sewing machine required. Guests may use the chairs, so keep the decorations and embellishments limited to the back of each chair to safeguard both your guests and your ornamental handiwork.
Ghosts, Goblins and Ghouls
Turn plain white cloth, felt or pillowcases into ghostly seat covers by inserting eyes and a mouth to every single with fabric pens, fabric paint or cut-out squares of black felt held in place with iron-on fusible webbing. To produce the seat cover form, fold fabric over the top of the seat back; wrap and tuck the sides in; then stitch the sides or hold them together with fusible webbing. Should you use a pillowcase, select one that slides easily over the seat back and covers the entire length of the back. To get goblins or ghouls, use purple or green cloth. Create felt ears and facial features — or even use glow-in-the-dark fabric paints for the eyes, nose and mouth for seat covers that flaunt their spooky sides after dark.
Creepy Cheesecloth
Shredded, pulled and stretched cheesecloth makes the chairs look like they’re covered in cobwebs or tattered cloth from a haunted house. Rip and tug in the cheesecloth, tearing it into some places, cover the seat with it as if the chairs belong in an abandoned home and their coverings fell apart years past. Tangle the legs of a couple of plastic spiders between holes at the mesh-like cheesecloth for a surprise for seated guests. Give the seat a mummified makeover by splitting the cheesecloth into strips and then wrap the seat up mummy-style. Place drawn eyeballs, plastic bows or eyes cut from a picture in a magazine beneath the wrappings, taped to the seat, for extra creepiness.
Rest in Pieces
Turn each chair into a faux tombstone by covering them with canvas sacks painted to appear like grave markers. Paint sayings on, like RIP: Rest in Pieces, or the names of fictional characters like Frank N. Stein or even Dr. Jekyl. Insert old dates into the tombstones, as if the deceased passed centuries ago. Instead of canvas sacks, gray fabric or two pieces of poster board stapled together, sleeve style, may be used as the faux tombstone coverings. Insert some construction-paper rubber or bats bats into some of the tombstones for extra effect.
Crazy Creatures
Create a series of mysterious animals, one per seat, using faux fur or Halloween-themed party favors. Make the sleeve of faux fur for a seat back, then add googly eyes and fangs made of felt for a cute or scary monster, depending on the ages of the party guests. Cut glow-in-the-dark bouncing eyeballs in half for a seat that’s always looking around the room. Hot glue the ball halves that have students onto old pillowcases to use as slipcovers for your own chairs. Use enough eyes to completely cover the seat backs for an uncommon glowing screen.