Paper Plate Ghosts

Here’s another original design, and another example of what I call ‘pure making’, where all of the original materials get used up, with no leftovers. Each paper plate will make two ghosts! The only other materials you need are a pencil, a pair of scissors, and some tape. (I’ve used masking tape, but sellotape would be fine too)

IMPORTANT - in my version of this project I’ve lit up my ghosts with battery-powered tea lights. Obviously, using candles, or regular tea lights, would be a very bad decision!

Here’s the making video. Below that, I’ll add some extra photos to show the method in a little more detail.

So, obviously the first thing to do is cut the paper plate in half, you only need one half for each ghost. Next, you fold that half in half again and make a sharp crease. You then tape that together so you have a quarter-circle section of the plate. On one side of this, you need to draw roughly where the eye and mouth will be. Remember, this is ‘half’ of the face, so you are drawing ‘one’ eye, and half of the mouth, like in the image below.

The shape of the eye and mouth cuts. These will always be slightly different, but that’s fine, they will make slightly different expressions.

Pushing these shapes in will make the holes for the eyes and mouth.

The fingers and arms.

Next, you can draw where the fingers and arms are. Once again, you are drawing ‘half’, so you can see how I’ve followed the the shape of the plate’s decoration to just cut around two fingers and up the inside of the arm, stopping where the line stops. You then do that on the other side too.

Cut or rip through the small join at the bottom, then slide one over the other and tape them together. This closes the gap at each side and also makes the base a bit stronger.

Making the tongue!

Finally, to make the tongue, draw a long tongue shape on the back crease. Once again, you are drawing ‘half’ of it, so you only need a line going from roughly where the eyes are, down to almost the end of the plate. * The tongue needs to be long, as it is then pulled right through the body of the ghost, and out through the open mouth. If it’s long enough, it should stay there! (You can see me feeding this through on the video clip)

Then you have a finished ghost!

You can light up your ghosts, like I have here, with battery-powered tea lights. (Do not use anything with a naked flame!)

The light reflects really well off the inside of the plates, and off the underside of the shapes that you’ve folded in. They make perfect table decorations, or to place on your window ledge so that they can be seen from outside. You might have to sit them on a small box, or a stack of books etc so that they can be seen.

Have fun.