The following Halloween decorations were originally published in 1921. The styles can be updated, but we here at Strange Ago like the look of the old paper decorations.
Heralding Halloween with Weird Decorations
The jolly festival of Halloween is in sight and imaginative people may turn loose their fancies and let them frolic among spooks and fairies. Young people and children enjoy this prankish festival more than any other, except Christmas.
In the shops that carry crepe paper and colored papers of other kinds, there are all sorts of funny and gruesome suggestions in the matter of dressing up the house and the table for a Halloween party. They present what their agents have found in the realm where witches, black cats, spirits, ghosts and strange creatures frolic under the autumn moon in the fields where the big yellow pumpkins lie. Having set down their findings in black and yellow and white on paper, they leave it to merrymakers to begin where they leave off and fashion such things as are shown above.
Only two light shades or candle shades are pictured, both of them a combination of yellow and black paper with a few touches of black and white water color paint. One of the shades is a cat’s face of orange paper with black ears. The paper is pasted against a cardboard foundation, two faces joined by strips at the sides and supported by ordinary candle-shade holders or with wire. In the other shade, Jack o’ Lantern sports a long beard of black crepe paper and has black horns.
A yellow windmill of cardboard surrounded by a fence of heavy black paper stands on a circular cardboard foundation. This is covered with paper grass and hay and two almost leafless trees (of wire wound with brown tissue paper) appear by a stiff wind. These trees might be managed with small twigs. Queer creatures inhabit the mill and yard and several pumpkins grin through the fence. These things are cut from paper made for the purpose and printed with Halloween figures. The witch may be cut from paper or made of black and white paper and wire. Her from is brown tissue paper. A belligerent black cat and an astonished harvest moon are mounted on small sticks for favors. There are many kinds of these, including ghosts made, like the witch, of white paper. Place cards and little holders for almonds or candy are as varied as any hostess could wish – all to be cut from printed paper and pasted to foundations of cardboard.
Source: Audubon County journal. (Exira, Iowa), 29 Sept. 1921.
