What could be more fun than dressing up your house with fabulous Halloween decorations? Tie the festive decor together by using a spider theme throughout. You can make all these creepy-crawly projects with basic craft materials. Happy Halloween!

Dress up pumpkins with spray paint and stencils

Skip the sharp knives and candles. Stamp a spider shape on paper and copy it in varying sizes on a photocopier (spider stamp, $6; www.jffstamps.com). Cut out the shapes, trace them on contact paper and stick them to a pumpkin surface. Spray-paint the entire pumpkin, and then peel off the spiders to reveal the orange underneath. Create the reverse effect—black spiders on orange or spray-painted pumpkins—by sticking the removed spider cutouts onto pumpkins. Use artificial pumpkins and keep them for next year (from $14, depending on size; www.funkins.com).

Hang gigantic crawling spiders outside your home

Make the spiders on a large sheet of black paper by tracing an oval platter for the body and a salad plate for the head. Then draw the legs freehand and cut out the shape. Using double-sided tape, stick knotted pieces of yarn to your front door to string together a web.

Dangle paper lanterns around your porch to give it a ghostly glow

Cut letters and spiders (use the photocopied stamp you used for the pumpkins) from black tissue paper and glue them to paper lanterns. Hang the lanterns with black yarn, and illuminate with battery-operated tea lights (lantern, $3 per 8" lantern; www.pearlriver.com).

Gather a family of friendly spider pumpkins

Paint a group of pumpkins and a bunch of small branches black. Cut small holes in the sides of the pumpkins and insert the branches to make legs. Push in yellow map tacks for eyes and then glue on triangular pieces of white paper for fangs. Use pumpkins and gourds in different shapes and sizes, and surround them with bowls of candy.