Handmade Halloween Pop Up Card (Templates)

We love nothing better than a handmade greeting card – whatever the occasion! It is an opportunity to get your creative juices flowing, whilst making something special and unique! Halloween is no different. So today, we have another fabulous Handmade Halloween Card design – a great Halloween Card Idea, you can easily customise!

Are you ready for some frights and screams? Will this bring terror to your heart tonight… well I don’t think so. We ADORE Halloween.. especially anything spookily CUTE! Halloween doesn’t have to be scary, your Halloween designs can be super fun and cute too!

Let’s make these handmade Halloween cards!

Supplies needed to make your Handmade Halloween Card

The supplies needed for this DIY Halloween Card are simple – making these the perfect craft for classrooms, libaries or other craft groups:

White printer paper (one sheet should make 3 pop ups)
Cardstock in desired colors (purple, orange, green and yellow are great Halloween colors)
Pens and markers
A pair of scissors
Glue stick
Optional: Paper Scraps for any add ons*
Optional: googly eyes are always fun

* you can use colored paper scraps to decorate your Halloween characters.. or use the paper cut offs from your paper chain, to make addititional items

You can grab (ad free) worksheets and templates in my teacher’s pay teacher’s store or carrying on reading with this free resource.

How to make an Easy Pop Up Halloween Card

As mentioned, our paper chain pop up card is super easy to learn how to make. The best bit however is that you can design it whatever way you want. Choose your own favourite Halloween characters. Choose from a witch, Frankenstein, ghoul, Zombie or even a pumpkin head or vampire! Or how aboute werewolf and a goblin? Really.. your imagination is the limit. That is what makes this greeting card so fun. One way. ENDLESS possibilities to customise and design your own Halloween Card.

As an example, we chose to make a cute Frankenstein, an adorable little Witch and a Ghoul/ Zombie character for our paper chain Halloween card!

Templates available

You can use the printable paper chain template if you wish, or create your own. I created three times of template

one where you cut out all three figures (a lot of cutting, but perfect for fitting in a card
one that helps you fold and cut
one where you create your own fold, but use my template to trace the “half” figure

I think the last one is my favourite way of making paper chains. But it is a question of preference. This printable options PLUS a lesson plan overview and one page printable worksheet are available in my Teacher’s Pay Teacher’s store. The small fee for these helps pay towards the upkeep of this website! I thank you for your support!!

You can of course fold your own paper and draw your own half figure!

Make your paper chain

Take your paper and make five folds approx 1.5inch wide (or the width of the half person template). You should have a concertina with 6 sides and 5 folds.

Trace the half person template onto the folds. Make sure the hand extends right to the edge to the open side of the accordian and that the inside of the “half head” is aligned with a folded side of the accordion.

Cut out the figure and open up.

If everything “went right”, you should now have 3 figures holding hands.

You may want to trim the hands of the figures at either end. Then flip over and decorate the back of your cut outs.

Now it is time to have LOTS OF FUN decorating!! Choose what Halloween characters you want to make. It can be ANYTHING. We fun, we chose a zombie, witch and frankenstein. But there is nothing stopping you from making a werewolf, vampie, mummy or pumpkin head person! You choose!

Decorate your zombie character

make a zombie card — Kawaii zombies are so fun and cute!

For the Zombie, we added some crazy eyes, cut a wiggle into the head, gave him some torn clothes and colored him in green.

Make your Frankenstein pop up

frankenstein cards — Frankensetin is always so fun. Cut out paper bolts from the scrap paper

For Frankenstein, we gave him a spiky head, cut out some bolts from scrap paper, gave him torn clothes and colored him in green. Don’t forget some scars too!

Add the witch character

paper witches hat — Cut out a paper hat for your witch

For the witch, we added orange hair, a purple outfit (I now wish, I had added stripey tights too! Ha!) and made a little witches hat from scrap paper.

finished spooky halloween characters — Aren’t these spookily cute!?! But yes, the witch needs stripey tights!

I also gave her a big nose and a mole.

Make additional Halloween decorations for your card

decorate the inside of the card — Great little paper decorations for the inside of the card or outside of the card!

Then I had some fun with additional decorations for the card. Again, you can use scrap pieces of paper to draw a paper Jack O’Lantern or two and a moon… or you can use scrap colored paper if you have some to hand.

You can also take a moment to draw/ cut some decorations to put on the outside of the card!

Final assembly of the card pieces

Once you have decided on the all the handmade Halloween card extras and what colored cardstock to use.. it is time for the final assembly of your card.

Glue any background decorations to the inside of the card.

Refold your paper chain, so that they colored parts of your characters are on the inside. Take care to fold the witches hat neatly too. Make neat creases.

Unfold. Lay on the inside of your card. Make note where your Zombie roughly needs to be glue.

Stack the paper chain again.

Add glue to the half of the back of the zombie.

Glue in place.

Add glue to half of the Frankenstein. Close the card on top and it will automatically glue the Frankenstein in the right place.

Open your card!!! FINISHED!

You can now add some a hand drawn spider web or two to the outside of the card and write “Happy Halloween”… Now it is time to add your Halloween Greeting Card messages. Want to know what to write in a Halloween card? Here are some ideas..

Halloween Greeting Card Messages

Every card needs a fun message. What Halloween card messages could you add? Try some of these fun and spooky ideas or have lots of fun creating your own:

Have a gourd-y Halloween
Don’t be a jerk-o-lantern this Halloween, so share your candy
Have a spooktacular Halloween!
Orange you pumped that it’s almost Halloween?
Happy Howl-oween!
Have a terror-ific Halloween!
Have a fang-tastic Halloween
Bugs and kisses this Halloween
Hope you have a boo-tiful Halloween

Teehee, aren’t these Halloween puns fun? I think, I will encourage MY kids to share their trick or treat sweets and candy for sure! Lots of great Halloween wishes to choose from!

Halloween Joke Printables

Printable Spider Jokes and Ghost Jokes

We actulally have some fantasic free printable jokes that you could also include in your Halloween Greeting Cards – a set of Printable Spider Jokes and Printable Ghost Jokes (scroll down to the printable section).

Other Halloween Jokes to try out

Some of my kids’ favourite jokes:

Q: Why did the skeleton cross the road?
A: To get to the body shop.
Q: What is a vampire’s favorite fruit?
A: A neck-tarine!
Q: What is a mummy’s favourite music?
A: Wrap music!
Q: Where do Ghosts and Ghouls like to go on vacation?
A: To mali-BOO!

Simply add a “Happy Halloween” message to your card. You are done!

Now you are ready for a night of frights and screams!

More Handmade Halloween Card Ideas

As always, we have a collection of some more handmade Halloween Card Ideas for you to browse. These include a cute Pop-Up Ghost Cards, some colorful Monster Cards and more!