It’s October, and you know what that means: department stores start setting up their Christmas decorations and we all brace ourselves of three months of terrible holiday music. But October also means Halloween, the best holiday ever. Not only is it an excuse to dress up in a costume and go beg your neighbors for food, but it is also the best holiday for decorating your house. Sure Christmas houses are nice to look at, but there is nothing more fun than a good scary Halloween house that is decked out with all the trappings of your favorite horror movies.
Decorating your house for Halloween has never been easier when you have a 3D printer at your disposal. You can find hundreds of kooky, spooky, and altogether ooky Halloween-themed 3D printable models, and if you can’t print them out at home then you can just take them to your local 3D printing service provider and have them printed for you. You can have the best Halloween house on the block, or if you happen to be a goth, then you can just have the best decorated house all year ’round.
Because I love Halloween so much, and because there are so many fantastic 3D printable models available, I’m going to be sharing the best 3D printable Halloween things with you all month long. This week I assembled the Ten Scariest 3D Printable Halloween Decorations for your Home:
Trick or Treat Sign by Dan Porter
Found on: MyMiniFactory
Cost: Free
Okay, so this isn’t the most exciting model on the list, but it’s a really simple solution to a common problem. Not everyone has a standalone home that they can decorate; for folks who live in an apartment or a condo decorations are often limited to what you can hang on your door. A sign like this is a great way to let fellow tenants and neighbors know that you have the Halloween spirit and want to give them candy.
Creepy Halloween Spiders by thinkyhead
Found on: Thingiverse
Cost: Free
Any Halloween decorations are going to need spiders, and this great OpenSCAD script can help you create a bunch of 3D printable spiders in a variety of sizes and poses. The legs print flat, but they are thin enough that they can be heated up and bent to make the spider look more realistic. And here is a creepy, crawly variant that can be hung from a bit of fishing line as if it were building itself a web.
Found on: Thingiverse
Cost: Free
This simple little 3D printable skeleton has moving arms and legs and prints all as a single part. You’ll need a decent-sized 3D printer to make one of these, but it is worth the effort to have one of these bone-shaking guys hanging from your door. The model can even be sized up if you have a really large printing bed, and includes a hole on the skull so it can be hung from some string.
Make a Jack-O-Lantern Project by mfritz
Found on: Thingiverse
Cost: Free
This project was developed as a way to help students learn how to use Tinkercad and any user can do the same. Just size the pumpkin as large as you want it, although its standard size is perfect for mini tea lights, and cut out shapes for the eyes, nose and mouth. The pumpkin can also have an image carved out of it, lettering or even a logo. Not only is this an easy way to create your own customized designs, but it’s an educational opportunity as well.
Customizable Head Stone – Grave Stone for Halloween! by UrbanAtWork
Found on: Thingiverse
Cost: Free
You can also create your own customizable grave stones with this simple model. There are several different size tombstones available, and they can also be scaled up depending on the size of your 3D printer. It occurred to me that because of the shape this would also be an easy model to break into separate pieces and assemble once all of the parts have been printed.
Zheng’s Creepy Peepers by zheng3
Found on: Thingiverse
Cost: Free
Nothing is going to creep out the neighborhood trick-or-treaters faster than dozens of sets of glowing eyes watching them as they make their way to your front door. The Creepy Peepers are made from an old toilet paper roll with a pair of eyes cut into it and a handful of 3D printed parts. Just stick a glowstick or tea light inside of the tube, close it up with the printed parts and hide them all over your yard. You’re guaranteed to have the spookiest house on the block with a handful of these hidden around your yard.
Found on: Thingiverse
Cost: Free
If you want pumpkin decorations that are less realistic, or that you don’t need to customize, then these little pumpkins are perfect for you. There are 8 different designs, each of them unique, and the models are the perfect size to fit over a string of fairy lights. But these little pumpkins can be used for just about anything, and they can even be stacked on top of each other to make a stack of little pumpkins. They were designed to require no supports or rafting, and they are hollow so you won’t need to worry about infill.
Found on: MyMiniFactory
Cost: Free
These easy to print black cat silhouettes were actually designed as a tutorial to convert a 2D image into a 3D printable image. But the cat silhouettes themselves make great decorations and can be put in front of light sources to cast eerie shadows, or just used as decorations all on their own. There are several different styles of silhouettes available, and you can always check out the tutorial and find out how to make your own.
Vampire Bat by yeg3d
Found on: Thingiverse
Cost: Free
No spooky Halloween decorations would be complete without a few giant bats flying around. While in reality bats are super adorable flying mouse-like creatures with funny noses (seriously just look at these cute little critters) they can also be a little scary when they fly around at night. Printing out a bunch of bats and hanging them in strategic places around your house can result in some very satisfying scares, and give it a creepy atmosphere.
The designer also created a few other bat designs that you can choose from, all of them highly detailed and pretty easy to 3D print.
Found on: Thingiverse
Cost: Free
Another wildly misunderstood animal associated with Halloween are crows, which are actually absurdly intelligent birds that have the problem solving skills of a small human child. It’s that spark of intelligence in their eyes and mischievous nature that often makes crows seems a little unnerving, and likely lead to them being associated with the things that go bump in the night. And this great model is designed to be printed out as a life-sized crow with glowing red eyes, the perfect addition to your spooky new house.
You will need to use a Dremel to hollow out the eyes for the LED lights, but that really isn’t a very difficult task. And when you see the crows eerie red eyes glowing in the dark the hard work will be more than worth it!
That’s it for the first week of my month of All Hallows Eve 3D Printable Models! Show me how you are using your 3D printer to decorate your home for Halloween, or just show off what 3D printing projects you are working on. You can find me on Twitter @SJGrunewald or you can just email me and say hi!
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