{seasonal style} Jack o’ Lantern Drinking Glasses & 110 More Halloween Project Ideas

When I came up with the fun idea to make Jack O’Lantern faces that I could stick to my drinking glasses for Halloween, my first concern was how to make them easily removable and resuable. Like all of the projects I blog about here, I try to put practicality and functionality first. For me, it’s no good to just get a pretty picture of the project – if the project isn’t actually usable for me or my family then it’s not worth my time. After considering the options, I determined that two good solutions would be adhesive backed vinyl and printable window decal film.

Adhesive backed vinyl {like the kind I’ve used for our bathtub toy labels, our mail and milk box labels, the wall words in our guest bath, and the labels under our kitchen sink} is easy to remove and restick, so it would have worked well for this project. I considered using black vinyl and cutting the Jack O’Lantern faces our using my Cricut electronic cutting machine or a Sizzix die cutting machine.

But since I really wanted this to be a quick and easy project that anyone could do, even if you don’t own any fancy cutting machines, I decided that printable window decal film would be the best product for this project because you can just run it through your printer and cut it out with scissors.

Earlier this year, I picked up a package of 10 sheets of inkjet Window Decals from Office Depot and used one sheet of them to label the drawers in my pantry. The cost of these decals breaks down to about $1.64 per sheet. You only need one sheet for this Jack O’Lantern drinking glass craft, which leaves you with 9 sheets for future projects. You can save some money by ordering a smaller, five sheet package from Amazon {though I haven’t tried this brand, so I can’t vouch for the print quality}, or you could share a package with a friend.

Once I had settled on printable window decal film for my drinking glass clings, I next needed to find some Jack O’Lantern faces to print and cut out. An online search for a cute, free download led me to these shirt stencils created by CraftBuds. I loved the classic and simple Jack O’Lantern faces available for download from CraftBuds, but in order to make the templates fit a standard size drinking glass, I had to reduce the size of the templates and reposition them to fit on one page for printing.

I wanted to make this project as easy as possible for all of you {i.e., no need for you to deal with resizing}, so I reached out to Mary of CraftBuds, and she graciously agreed to offer a free downloadable PDF of her Jack O’Lantern templates sized perfectly for this drinking glass project. Simply click over to CraftBuds to download the template {and while your there, be sure to check out some of their other fabulous craft projects!}.

The template includes eight mouths, noses, and sets of eyes, giving you enough mix and match pieces for a full set of eight drinking glasses.

Once you have downloaded them template, print it onto one sheet of window decal film. Be sure to read and following the packaging instructions {which specify the best printer settings to use}.

Because the window decal film is clear, you can leave a little excess around each face shape. This is especially helpful for the eyes with eyebrows and the nose that looks like two nostrils – just cut them together as one piece!

Once all of your face shapes are cut out, all you need to do is to peel of the backing and stick them to your glasses. The decal film sticks to the glass well, but is also very easy to remove from the glass and reposition. Just be careful not to touch the back of the decal film with your fingers any more than necessary. Like all stickers, touching the back will leave oil from your fingers making them less sticky.

Finally, fill up your glasses. I wanted my Jack O’Lanterns to be orange, so I searched the beverage aisle and ended up with a bottle of Tropical Blend V8 Splash.

I was thrilled with the way these Jack O’Lantern drinking glasses turned out, and I wanted to make sure we’d be able to use the decals again year after year. That meant I needed to find a way to store the decals. It’s not very practical to try to stick each face shape back on to it’s original backing {trust me, I tried} – it’s just too many small pieces of backing to keep track of and match up.

Instead, I began searching the house looking for something that I could stick the decals to for storage. Then I remembered that I had recently helped my boys make some sticker books, and we had some sheets of stickers left over. The plastic sticker backing was perfect – so I combined two partial sheets, leaving me with one empty piece of plastic backing.

What do you think? Are you ready to print the template onto a sheet of window decal film to make your own quick and easy Jack O’Lantern Drinking Glasses?