DIY Spooky Skeleton Decor With A Wood Pallet & Some Dollar Tree Supplies

As the leaves start to turn and the air grows crisp, you see Halloween on the horizon. Whether you go kitschy or scary, decorating for Halloween is fun for you, your family, and your neighbors, who get to enjoy the fruits of your labor. However, checking the price tags on Halloween yard décor at a store like Home Depot might give you pause — and dampen your spooky spirit. To retain your holiday excitement, explore budget friendly DIYs that incorporate affordable supplies from Dollar Tree.

A great Halloween DIY involves a wood pallet, which you might be able to scoop up for free, and some skeleton parts on Dollar Tree's shelves. With a little bit of gray and black spray paint, you can transform the pallet into unforgiving metal bars that imprison the poor undead skeletons crawling from your yard's dirt. While you're shopping, pick up some of Dollar Tree's purple Halloween décor to explore more DIY possibilities.

There are subtle ways to decorate your home for Halloween, but sometimes loud holiday décor is the most fun, especially if you're making it yourself. To get started on your DIY project, lay out your wood pallet on cardboard in a well-ventilated area like your backyard. Using spray paint primer, coat the visible areas of the pallet, following it up with a coat of gray metallic spray paint. Since this DIY is meant to be temporary and viewed mostly at night, you don't have to be as precise or careful with your spray paint application. While you could stop there, applying three different paint tones helps sell the illusion of metal bars, so add touches of black and white spray paint to create a mottled surface similar to steel.

Once you have your "bars," you can play with the scene you'd like to create beneath them. To mimic the appearance of fire, as if the skeletons are escaping from the underworld, you can thread red or orange lights beneath the bars, stapling the wires to the pallet to secure them. You could also splatter the bars with touches of fake blood, which is easy to mix up. Grab some Elmer's glue — or the Dollar Tree generic alternative — and mix in a lot of red food coloring followed by a little bit of green to get the right brownish-red color of blood.

On your visit to the Dollar Tree, make sure to pick up a few skulls along with some skeletal hands. These plastic skeleton parts sit beneath your pallet, playing the part of vengeful undead creatures desperate to crawl to the surface. If you opted to create fake blood, you could dip the skeletal fingers into it, as if they have already claimed a victim. The glue blood dries shiny on surfaces, so it will appear "fresh" for all of October.

Once your skulls and skeletal parts are placed, line the pallet with some spare bricks or paving stones to give it a finished look. Add extra touches from the Dollar Tree like spiders, rats, and tombstones to heighten the fear factor. You can also create another affordable spooky skeleton Halloween decoration that will match perfectly with your imprisoned dead. It's nice to take inspiration from the Halloween aisle at Home Depot, but making your decorations yourself can be satisfying, and your wallet will thank you for it later.