Spooky blinking eyes! Everyone who comes to the house comments on these. Easy, cheap, and high-impact.  You can hang a few or a ton of these. Last year I did a massive wall of these (about 25) for our Fantastic Hosts Halloween event (what are the Fantastic Hosts?) and it was a huge hit. I’m using a mere 6 of them on the front porch this year.

Because I made them last year, I do not have the usual step by step pictures, but I will talk you through it…

Supplies:

Shoe Boxes

Black Spray Paint

Black Duct Tape

Clear packing Tape

Tissue Paper

A string of Xmas lights

An Exacto knife

Step 1: Spray paint the boxes black, tops and bottoms (you don’t have to paint the inside).

Step 2: Draw your eye shapes on the bottom and cut out with an Exacto knife.

Step 3: Use tissue paper in the color of your choice (I like “monster-y” colors like red, green and yellow) and tape a layer inside the box behind your eye holes.

Step 4: Put your string lights inside the box, and use your clear tape to attach the string down along the bottom of the inside of the box. (otherwise you’ll see the little bulbs through the tissue, and we just want to see the light.) NOTE: If you have a very long string of lights, you can light up two or three boxes, just use electrical tape to douse the light from the bulbs that wind up outside the boxes. (the ONLY light we want to see is through the eyes.) Be sure and cut a little notch in one of the back lower corners for the cord, and dangle the plug out of the box.

Step 5: Put the top of the box on the back and use your black duct tape to seal up your box. The key to this is making sure no light comes through any cracks in the box, so do plug in your box and cover any escaping light with the black tape.

A Note on the Light Strings: Your light string comes with extra bulbs, one of which has red on the bulb. This one will make your light string blink when you replace the first bulb in your light string with it. Do this on a couple of your boxes, and then it will look like some of your goulish eyes are blinking. It looks great! I have 3 out of 6 blinking in my arrangement.

Time to Hang the Eyes!

Pick a spot that is dark, against a dark wall is best, and hang your eyes in a random pattern. To hang them, make a “tab” or a “loop” out of the duct tape, tape it to the top/back of the box, and I used a staple gun to attach the tab to the brick on my porch. I would use those 3M Command Adhesive strips with a “loop” if you don’t want to damage the walls, inside or out. Now plug in the lights and see how they look. The final step is to cover over the lights with a somewhat translucent black fabric, even “cheap” (low thread count) black sheets would work. (Here I used my trusty staple gun again) This is a great effect, and covers the edges of the boxes so you just see the lights of the eyes. There are several ways you can do this. I like to sort of blobishly bunch the fabric around the eyes. You could get a single monster effect by draping the fabric in a more ghost-like way over one box of eyes at a time. You could also place these in bushes (be aware that rain/sprinklers will ruin them) or in dark little cubbies under stairs, furniture, wherever it’s dark.

Here’s the spot BEFORE: (every year we put one of those fake pumpkins over the porch light…)

And here’s the process of hanging the lights and fabric:

   

And at night:

   

And here’s a sneak-preview of the whole front porch at night:

 

There’s more Halloween Goodness to come! Next time, I’ll show you the whole front yard.