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My sister asked me how I keep two kids busy on a rainy October Saturday without buying a single craft kit. I told her: I print. That is the whole answer. A stack of coloring pages, a box of half-broken crayons we found under the couch, and the kitchen table covered in a dollar-store tablecloth so nobody yells about the marker that always, always escapes.
The posters and drawing pages below are the ones I keep going back to, year after year. Some are coloring books. Some are dot-to-dot and color-by-number, which buy me a solid twenty minutes of quiet, which in October is basically a miracle. My youngest taped his finished pumpkin poster to the fridge in September and it is still there, sun-faded and proud, in June.
A few of these I grabbed from an indie design shop and printed at home on whatever paper was in the tray. Some of the links are affiliate links, so if you grab a file I might get a tiny cut. Costs you nothing. Grab the crayons.
The Tshirt Graphic That Became a Bedroom Poster
This one was meant for a shirt. I never made the shirt. Instead I blew it up to fill a sheet of 8.5×11, printed it on the bright white copy paper my partner uses for work, and taped it above my daughter’s desk where her old drawings used to go. The little ghost face in the design is friendly, not scary, which matters when you have a six-year-old who still checks the closet.
She wanted to color the white parts herself, so we ran a second copy in grayscale and let her go at it with markers. The blacks come out dense if your printer is in a good mood. Mine was not, so the first print had streaks across the top. I just trimmed that strip off and nobody noticed.
Nitpick: the cut version on a darker shade of paper looks flat, you lose the outline. Print this one on white and let the design do its thing.
Clipart I Cut Up for a Hundred Tiny Projects
A bundle like this is the lazy crafter’s best friend. Little bats, a pumpkin or two, a goofy spider. I printed a full sheet, handed my son a pair of safety scissors, and let him cut out the shapes to glue onto a paper bag he wanted to turn into a trick-or-treat sack. Glue stick, not white glue. White glue and clipart is a soggy disaster, learned that the hard way.
The pieces are clean and chunky, which is good when small hands are doing the cutting. Nothing too fiddly. We covered the whole bag, then his cousin wanted one too, so I printed the sheet again the next morning.
One small gripe: a few of the images sit close to the page edge, so if your printer has wide margins like my old one you might clip a bat wing. I just nudged the print scale down to 95 percent and it all fit.
A Second Clipart Set for the Window Garland
I bought the companion set because I wanted more variety for a window garland, and this one delivered. Different little characters, a couple of cute haunted houses. I printed these on slightly heavier paper, the 65 lb stuff, punched a hole in the corner of each cutout, and strung them on baker’s twine across the kitchen window.
The neighbor walked by, stopped, and asked where I bought the garland. I bought a file. That is the part I love. It cost me ink and an afternoon.
The nitpick here is color saturation. On regular paper the oranges came out a little washed. The heavier paper held the color much better, so if you have a sheet of cardstock kicking around, use it for the pieces that face the street.
Coloring Cats That Bought Me a Quiet Movie Night
Movie night in our house means I want the kids occupied so I can actually watch the movie. This cat coloring book was the answer last fall. Black cats, witch cats, a fat cat in a tiny hat. I printed maybe eight pages, clipped them to a clipboard each, and the kids colored on the floor through most of a cartoon Halloween special.
The outlines are bold and forgiving, so a kid who scribbles outside the lines still ends up with something that looks finished. My nephew, who is four and colors like a tiny tornado, made a green cat and was deeply proud of it.
Nitpick: a few pages have big open background areas that take forever to fill, and that is where I lost the youngest’s attention. I just told him the background was the night sky and he could leave it. Done.
The Cute Coloring Pack for the Kid Who Hates Scary
Not every kid wants gore. My daughter wants pumpkins with smiley faces and ghosts that look like marshmallows, and this pack is exactly that. Round, soft, cheerful. I printed a fresh batch the first weekend of October and kept the stack on the counter so she could grab one whenever she got bored.
The line weight is on the thicker side, which means crayons fill it nicely without the kid having to be precise. She did three in one sitting and asked for the printer to make more. I obliged, because a quiet kid is worth the toner.
My one complaint is that the pages are so cute they all kind of blur together after a while. I started writing the date in the corner of each finished one so we could remember which came first. Now it is a little flip-book of October.
An Activity Book That Survived a Three-Hour Car Ride
We drove to my mom’s the weekend before Halloween and I needed something that was not a screen. I printed this whole activity book, stapled it down the spine, and handed one to each kid in the back seat with a clipboard and a zip bag of crayons.
Mazes, spot-the-difference, a little coloring, some counting. The variety is the point. A coloring book alone runs out of steam, but switching between puzzle types kept them going almost the entire drive. Almost. The last twenty minutes were a lost cause, but I will take two and a half hours.
The nitpick: stapling a thick stack at home is a fight if your stapler is small like mine. I ended up folding it in half and using two binder clips instead, which honestly worked better for clipboard use anyway.
Sweet Pages for the Toddler Who Eats the Crayons
These are simple. Big shapes, lots of white space, designs a very small child can handle. I printed a few for my friend’s toddler when they came over, the kind of art where success means a crayon touched the paper at all. He colored a pumpkin mostly purple and we hung it on the front door with painter’s tape so it would not pull the paint off.
The simplicity is the feature. No tiny details to frustrate a two-year-old. Just chunky friendly shapes and room to make a mess inside the lines, or near them, or wherever.
Nitpick: because the designs are so open, they print fast and you will burn through a stack quickly. I print these four to a page at reduced size for the littlest ones so one sheet goes further and there is less crumpling.
Color-by-Number That Doubles as Stealth Math Practice
My partner is a teacher and he loves these because the kid does not know they are practicing numbers. You match the number to the color, you fill the box, and slowly a witch or a bat appears. My older one calls it a secret picture and treats it like a puzzle.
I printed a set for a small party we threw at the kitchen table, set out crayons sorted into the right number-color piles, and the kids worked through them with a focus they never give homework. Then they raced to see whose picture showed up first.
The nitpick is the legend. Make sure the number key prints clearly, because if the tiny key at the top comes out faint the whole thing falls apart. I bumped the print darkness up a notch and it solved it.
Dot-to-Dot Volume 4 for the Kid Who Counts Out Loud
Dot-to-dot is the sneakiest quiet-time trick I own. You connect the numbers, a shape emerges, and a kid who is learning to count gets to practice without a single worksheet groan. This volume has higher counts than the early ones, so it suited my second-grader who needed a real challenge.
I printed a handful and tucked them in his backpack for the bus, and the teacher told me he was the only one not bouncing off the walls on Halloween morning. Pencil first, then he traced the finished line in orange marker so it popped.
The nitpick: at high dot counts the numbers sit close together and can look cluttered. Print it a touch larger if your kid is younger, gives those little fingers room to find the next number.
Volume 3, the Gentler Counting Pages
I grabbed this one alongside Volume 4 because my younger one was not ready for the harder counts and got frustrated watching her brother fly through his. Volume 3 has lower numbers and simpler pictures, so she could finish a page on her own and feel like a champion.
We sat at the porch table one warm afternoon and did these side by side, her on the easy set, him on the hard one, both of them happy. A rare and beautiful thing. She did a ghost, declared it the best ghost ever made, and refused to color it because it was already perfect.
Nitpick: there is some overlap in the pictures between the two volumes, so if you only need one, Volume 3 is plenty for the under-six crowd. Get both only if you have a counting range to cover like I did.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you wear a halloween mask in public?
In most places, sure, on Halloween itself nobody blinks at a kid in a costume mask at the grocery store. A few towns have old rules on the books about masks in public, usually aimed at adults, not trick-or-treaters, so if you are unsure a quick check of your local rules settles it.
For the under-tens I skip the full plastic masks anyway. They fog up, they slip, and my son could never see the candy he was reaching for. We do face paint or a printed half-mask on a stick instead, which he can drop the second he is over it.
What is vintage halloween?
Vintage Halloween is the look from roughly the 1950s through the 1980s, before everything went glossy and mass-produced. Think muted orange, that specific shade of harvest gold, slightly goofy black cats, and witches that are more silly than scary. The decorations from the 1980s especially have a soft, printed, paper-and-tin feel.
A lot of the cute printable styles borrow from that era, which is why they feel cozy instead of creepy. If you want that older mood, print on a cream paper instead of bright white and the whole thing warms up.
Can I print these at home?
Yes, that is the entire point. Every file here prints on a regular home printer with regular letter paper. I have run hundreds of these pages on a cheap inkjet that complains constantly and they come out fine.
If you want them sturdier for hanging, a heavier paper like 65 lb or 110 lb holds up better and will not curl when you tape it to a window in the sun. For plain coloring, regular copy paper is honestly all you need.
What file formats do these designs come in?
Most of these come as PDF or PNG, which is exactly what you want for printing at home. You open the file, you hit print, you are done. No special software, no design skills.
A few bundles also include image files you can drop into a document if you want to resize or arrange several on one page, like I do for the toddler pages. But for nearly everyone, downloading and printing the PDF straight off is all it takes.
Before You Print
Every October my kitchen table turns into a craft disaster zone and I would not change a thing. Crayons rolling off the edge, a half-colored bat stuck to someone’s elbow, the printer wheezing through its fourth batch of the morning. None of it cost much. A stack of files, some paper, the crayons we already owned.
Pick two or three of these, print a pile, and put them somewhere the kids can grab one when boredom hits. My daughter’s purple-pumpkin poster is still on the door from last fall and I keep meaning to take it down. I never do.