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My sister dropped her kid at my place the first Saturday of October and said, good luck. So I did what I always do when a small human needs entertaining for three hours. I opened my laptop, found a stack of cute Halloween files, and sent them to the printer one by one while she picked the colors.
None of these are scary. That was the rule. My niece is six and decided last year that the witch on our porch sign was watching her, so we are firmly in friendly-ghost territory now. Smiling pumpkins, round little cats, ghosts that look like marshmallows. The kind of stuff that ends up taped to the fridge until January because nobody has the heart to take it down.
A few of these I cut on my Cricut, a few we just colored at the kitchen table. I’ll tell you which paper held up and which one curled. Some of the links below are affiliate links, so if you grab a file I might get a tiny cut, no extra cost to you. Grab a juice box. Here we go.
The Pencil That Started Our Whole Craft Box
I cut this little spooky pencil on vinyl and stuck it on a plain pencil case for my niece, because she has opinions about school supplies and they are loud. The face is goofy, not creepy, which is exactly what a six-year-old wants on something she carries to first grade.
We also pressed it onto a cheap canvas tote so she could collect candy without using a pillowcase like I did as a kid. Held up fine after two washes. One thing I’d flag: the smile line is thin, so if you weed it too fast you’ll lift it. Go slow on that part and you’re golden.
Retro Trick or Treat, Now Living On A Tote Bag
This one has that seventies orange-and-cream vibe, the kind of lettering you’d see on an old candy wrapper. I am a sucker for retro, so I jumped on it. Cut it in burnt orange and slapped it on a tote for my own candy run.
My partner said it looked like a band shirt, which I am taking as a compliment. If you’re pressing it on a dark shirt, mirror the design first. I forgot once on a different file and ironed a backwards ghost onto a perfectly good pillowcase. Learn from me.
The Shirt My Niece Refused To Take Off
FAB-BOO-LOUS. She read it out loud about forty times. I pressed this onto a lavender kids’ tee, not the usual black, and the pale ghosts popped against it way better than I expected. She wore it to school the next Monday and apparently corrected a classmate’s spelling. Proud aunt moment.
The design has a few small floaty elements, so if you’re new to a heat press, lay a sheet over it and press in sections. My first kids’ shirt had one corner of the transfer lift because I rushed. Peeled it warm instead of cold. Now I wait.
Fifty Pages To Outlast A Rainy Saturday
This is the coloring book I printed when the rain killed our porch plans. Fifty pages is a lot. We did not finish them and that is the point, it bought me a whole quiet afternoon and a second cup of coffee while she colored a bat purple, then green, then back to purple.
I printed on regular copy paper because markers were involved and I knew there would be casualties. Worked fine for crayons and colored pencils. If your kid leans on markers like mine, bleed-through is real, so slide a junk sheet under each page or just print single-sided.
A Hundred Kawaii Pages, Or, My Printer’s October Workout
A hundred pages of round-faced ghosts and chubby pumpkins. The kawaii style is what won my niece over, big eyes, tiny smiles, nothing with fangs. I printed maybe fifteen of them at first and let her pick favorites, because a full hundred would have emptied a whole ink cartridge in one sitting and I am not made of black ink.
The line art is clean and bold, which matters with little hands that color outside everything. My only nitpick is the file is one big set, so I had to scroll to find the pages she wanted. I printed her top ten and hole-punched them into a folder she now calls her spooky book.
Friendly Ghosts For The Kid Who Hates Scary
Round little ghosts, the friendly kind, no creepy eyes anywhere. After the porch-witch incident I screen everything now, and these passed. We colored a few at the kitchen table while the pasta water came to a boil.
She gave one ghost rainbow stripes and named him Gerald. Gerald is now on the fridge. The pages are simple with lots of open space, which is great for younger kids who get frustrated by tiny detail. If anything I’d have liked a couple with more to color for the older cousin, but for a six-year-old it was just right.
The Second Ghost Set We Actually Used More
Same friendly-ghost energy as the other set but a different batch of poses, and weirdly we reached for this one more. One ghost is holding a tiny pumpkin and that single detail sent my niece into a whole story about the ghost’s pet. Kids.
I printed these at the library actually, because my home printer was sulking that week and I had a stack of other things going. The library printer gave crisper black lines than mine does, so if your at-home prints look gray and tired, that’s a free fix nobody mentions. Coloring pages do not need fancy paper, regular cardstock at the library counter is plenty.
Cat Stickers That Vanished Onto Every Surface
I printed these on sticker paper, the matte kind, and ran them through my Cricut to kiss-cut the shapes. Cute little black cats with round eyes. Within an hour they were on her water bottle, her cousin’s forehead, and somehow the dog.
If you don’t have a cutting machine, print them, let the ink dry a full minute, and cut by hand with scissors. They’re simple shapes, no fiddly bits. The matte sticker paper takes pen too, so she labeled a few with cat names. Whiskers, Boo, and one just called Cat. Solid lineup.
The Ghost Bundle I Cut For The Window
This is a shape bundle, so it’s less about coloring and more about cutting. I ran a few of the ghosts out of white cardstock and taped them to the kitchen window where the morning light comes through. From the street they look like they’re floating. My neighbor asked where I bought them and I got to say I made them, which never gets old.
It’s built for laser cutting but my Cricut handled the clean shapes fine on cardstock. The thin tails on a couple of the ghosts can tear if you peel the mat wrong, so bend the mat away from the paper instead of yanking the paper up. Lost one ghost to a hasty peel. RIP.
Clipart Ghosts For The Last-Minute Party Cups
The night before her little Halloween playdate I realized I had nothing for the cups. So I cut these ghost cliparts small, in glittery vinyl, and stuck one on each kid’s juice cup so nobody fought over whose was whose. Worked better than writing names that smear.
Glitter vinyl, I will warn you, gets everywhere and I was still finding silver flecks on the kitchen floor a week later. Worth it. The cliparts come in a few poses so I gave each kid a slightly different ghost. If you’re doing a bunch, batch-cut them all on one mat to save vinyl, the shapes nest together nicely.
Frequently Asked Questions
What vegetables go well with pumpkin?
Funny enough this came up at our craft table because my niece insisted pumpkins are food, not just decor. She’s right. Roasted pumpkin sits happily next to sage, onion, garlic, and sweet potato, and a little kale stirred in at the end stops it feeling too sweet.
For the kids I just cube it, toss it with a bit of oil, and roast it alongside carrots. They dipped both in ketchup, which I refuse to comment on. The point is the pumpkin you print and the pumpkin you eat can both show up on the same October afternoon.
Why do cats do halloween cat?
If you mean why black cats are everywhere at Halloween, it goes back centuries to old superstitions tying them to witches and bad luck, which is unfair to cats who mostly want a warm spot and a nap.
These days the black cat is just a friendly mascot of the season, which is why those cat sticker pages above are such a hit with kids. My niece’s takeaway was that cats wear tiny hats in October. I let her keep that one.
What are ghost cats?
Ghost cats is the cute mashup you see all over kids’ Halloween art, a cat draped in a little ghost sheet or a ghost with cat ears. It’s the season’s two favorite mascots smushed into one, and small kids adore it.
I didn’t have a dedicated ghost-cat file in this batch, but my niece invented her own by coloring a ghost page and adding pointy ears in pencil. Gerald the cat-ghost now lives next to plain Gerald on the fridge. The fridge is getting crowded.
How to use witches cauldron bewitchment?
This isn’t a cauldron-themed batch, since I kept everything firmly in the not-scary lane for the six-year-old. If you do want a cauldron file for older kids, the same printing rules apply: bold line art on regular paper for coloring, heavier cardstock or vinyl if you’re cutting it for decor.
For a craft afternoon, a friendly bubbling cauldron coloring page plus a cup of green juice labeled potion will keep kids busy longer than you’d think. Mine spent twenty minutes deciding what the potion did before she colored a single bubble.
Before You Print
By the time my sister came back the kitchen table had marker on it, the fridge had three new ghosts, and my niece was wearing a shirt she planned to sleep in. None of it cost much. A few files, a stack of paper, a roll of vinyl I already had.
If you’ve got a kid coming over and a few hours to fill, pick two or three of these, send them to the printer, and let the kid run the color choices. Just keep a junk sheet under the marker pages. And maybe put the glitter vinyl somewhere you can find a broom.