Create Your Own Haunted House Craft for Halloween

This haunted house craft is SO CUTE and really fun to make! Did you know you can make a spooky haunted house out of a painted milk carton?! It’s such an easy craft that’s perfect for Halloween.

Milk Carton Haunted House

This milk carton haunted house is one of my favourite Halloween crafts we’ve done this year. It’s SO CUTE and it just screams Halloween! Cover it with friendly ghosts or creepy ghouls – it’s all up to you!

It’s also a perfect craft for all ages to participate in, because guess what? No one cares if your haunted house has crooked shutters or a wobbly fence – in fact it adds to the character!

Decorate your house with a white paint pen and foam stickers. Then place a battery operated, flameless tea light into the milk carton to make the windows glow! It’s just SO FUN! (Can you tell I love Halloween??)

Check out our Haunted House Craft video tutorial:

*Note: Scroll down for the step-by-step photo tutorial.

Looking for more Halloween crafts? Here’s some of our favourites:

Bag of Bones

Halloween Q-Tip Painting

Flapping Bat Craft

Here’s what you’ll need:

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The full printable instructions are at the end of this post, but here’s a list of products on Amazon and Target that are similar to the supplies we used.

To make the house:

Milk carton (washed out and dry)
Sharpie
X-acto knife
Black acrylic paint
Paintbrush

To decorate the house:

Scissors
Black craft foam
White paint pen
Tacky glue
Parchment paper
Scotch tape
Foam Halloween cutouts (or coloured craft foam sheets)

What if I don’t have parchment paper?

If you don’t have parchment paper for the haunted house’s windows, you can also use tissue paper, wax paper, or crepe paper.

What can I use instead of craft foam?

If you don’t have craft foam sheets, you can use cardstock or construction paper instead. It won’t have quite as nice a 3D look, but it will absolutely work!

What else can I use to decorate my milk carton haunted house?

There are so many options to decorate your haunted house! You can pull apart cotton balls to use as spiderwebs or as smoke coming from the chimney (the milk cap opening). You can also use colourful buttons, plastic spiders, stickers, googly eyes, etc.

DIY Haunted House Craft

Paint and decorate a milk carton to make this haunted house craft that’s both spooky and sweet. This is such a fun kids craft for Halloween!

Materials:

Milk carton(washed and dry)
Black acrylic paint
Black craft foam
White paint pen
Tacky glue
Parchment paper
Tape
Halloween foam shapes
Battery operated tealight candle

Equipment:

Black marker (Sharpie or similar)
Craft/utility knife
Paintbrush
Scissors

Instructions:

Step 1: Prepare and paint milk carton

With a black marker, draw two windows and a door shape on the left side of the carton. This will be the front of our haunted house.
Use an x-acto knife to cut out the windows completely, and cut out three sides of the door.
Use the x-acto knife to score a line on the remaining side of the door, to allow it to open easier. Just scratch the surface and be careful not to cut all the way through.
Draw windows in the center of both sides of the house (the front and back of the milk carton). Then cut them out with the x-acto knife. Set aside the scraps – you’ll use them to measure decorations later.
Paint the milk carton black. Be sure to paint the cap and just inside the windows and door as well.You can paint most of the carton while holding it. Either wait for the paint to dry before painting the bottom third, or set it on scrap paper while you paint.
It’s best to cut out the access door before you paint, but unfortunately we forgot. Use the x-acto knife to cut an access hole on the back of the house (the right side of the carton). This door needs to be large enough to fit your hand in.

Step 2: Cut foam pieces

Place a scrap window cut out on a piece of black craft foam and cut a rectangle around it, making the foam slightly larger than windows. Do this for all four windows.
Take the foam rectangles and cut out cross shapes from them. These will become the window panes.
Take the window cut out and cut a length of foam a bit taller than the window. Now cut that foam into eight smaller strips – around 1/2 inch wide.No need to use a ruler, since crooked shutters are perfect for a haunted house.
Use a white paint pen to draw a rectangle outline on the shutters. Then draw short horizontal lines for slats on the shutters.

Step 3: Add window panes and parchment

Put tacky glue on the top and bottom points of a window pane.
Reach inside the access opening and stick it in place behind a window.Repeat for the other windows.
Cut a piece of parchment paper large enough to fit inside the front of the house, covering the two windows and door.
Cut two other pieces of parchment paper to fit behind the side windows.
Add tape to the top and bottom of the parchment paper.
Reach inside the access hole and put the parchment paper in place behind the window. Repeat for the two other pieces of parchment paper.For the larger piece of paper you may need to add two more pieces of tape to the sides to keep it in place.

Step 4: Decorate the house

Use a white paint pen to draw a fence all the way around the haunted house.
Now add tacky glue to the backs of the shutters and put them in place – the more crooked, the better! (You could even glue one partially falling off.)
Now glue on the foam Halloween shapes. We added a bat and ghost to the front of our house, and a pumpkin on either side, down by the fence.
Draw scallop borders on the roof to look like shingles.You can also add spider webs and little brick accents to all sides of the house.

Step 5: Add flameless candle

Turn on and insert a battery operated tealight candle into your haunted house and close the door.
Your milk carton haunted house craft is complete!
Now turn off the lights and watch the flameless tealight flicker!

Helpful Tip:

You can glue all four points of the window panes, but we found that a lot messier. Two dots of glue is enough to hold the panes in place.We cut out our own shapes (ghosts, bats, pumpkins, and tomb stones) from craft foam sheets, but you can also buy foam Halloween sticker shapes from the dollar store or Amazon.

This is such a cool craft that you can customize for other times of the year as well. How fun would it be to make a “gingerbread” village out of milk cartons at Christmas time?!

Here’s even more fun Halloween crafts: