DIY Miniature Haunted House

We recently made this cardboard DIY Haunted House from a box of total mystery supplies! It was a "Chopped"-style challenge where Derek from VanOaks Props sent us a box of mystery stuff and we had to make a DIY Halloween decoration from it. 😀

After a bit of thinking, we decided to make this miniature haunted house diorama. We even used the cardboard box it was shipped in to build most of the house.

It was crazy fun trying to come up with ideas on how to use all this random little stuff to make a complete project and the best part, it would be so easy for you to make your own at home.

Please consider watching the video above as you read to see the build in action!

Materials:

• Cardboard
• Acrylic Paints - https://amzn.to/3coqpqs
• Hot Glue - https://amzn.to/3qz1vbG
• Small Rocks
• Small Branches
• (Optional) - Wooden Finial - https://amzn.to/3eCqF5R
• (Optional) - Lights/LEDs - https://amzn.to/3eAmvvB
• (Optional) - Tombstone Silicone Mold - https://amzn.to/3BsoZos
• (Optional) - Miniature Cats, Pumpkins, etc.

Tools:

• Paintbrushes - https://amzn.to/3PPk9FW
• Scissors - https://amzn.to/3RiMPbF
• Utility Knife - https://amzn.to/3HUoR2I
• Hot Glue Gun - https://amzn.to/3coqsm8

After cutting the USPS box into big pieces, we drew on the shapes of the walls and windows and cut out our cardboard pieces with a utility knife. You could use any old cardboard you have lying around for this. Perfect way to recycle all those Amazon boxes!

We also cut some smaller pieces of cardboard for the siding, trim, roof tiles, etc.

Next we used hot glue to attach all the little pieces. The siding is made up of dozens of small "board" pieces that are glued on with a bit of randomness and unevenness to create more style. The door was made from 5 vertical pieces with a couple of smaller "boards" glued across.

Finally, once the individual parts were glued up we covered them all in a coat of Mod Podge that we tinted with black acrylic paint. This doubles to seal the cardboard and provide a primer for painting!

The reason we did the black base coat first, is because we're using hot glue to make the windows! Once the windows are in it's a lot tougher to paint it without getting paint on them so the order helps there.

Simply lay your piece flat on a piece of parchment or wax paper, and then lay your hot glue in the window openings. This is a really fun technique that takes a little practice to get it just right. Check out more detail in the video in Step 1!

Once the windows were dry, we glued the four walls of the house together using more hot glue.

One of the pieces we got in our "mystery box" was this wooden finial. It's kind of a random wooden thing that we decided would make a great chimney. We cut off the top and then drilled into a bit to make a hollow.

Don't have one? Just use cardboard and make a rectangular chimney!

To make the roof, we measured, cut the cardboard, and glued two big pieces together at an angle, as shown. The roof will be removable so we can get inside the house to adjust lighting.

For the roof tiles, we cut dozens of tiny pieces of cardboard and then glued them on one at a time. You start at the bottom and work your way up in rows, giving it some randomness as you go to create an interesting look.

The "chimney" also got hot glued on one side, and we added some random little small accent pieces (also from the mystery box) to the trim below the ridge line to give it a fun look.

Once the roof was done, we were finally able to do a full coat of the black mod podge on everything, which produced this really fun looking black house!

You could stop here...but there's more fun to be had!

While a cardboard base for the house would be simpler, we opted to use a small piece of insulation foam (xps foam) for the base. This way we could texture it and do some fun stuff!

We used acetone to burn into the foam a bit to create a pathway and some texture, and also used some rolled up aluminum foil to roll around and texture the foam further. Don't have acetone? Just use the tin foil and some rocks and roll them around, pressing hard to give it some texture.

Finally, we grabbed some small stones from outside in our yard and glued them in various places to create a little landscape outside. Later on, we'll do the same thing with some small branches we found outside to make little trees. 😀

We got a small LED strip in our mystery box, so we attached them inside the house to make it glow! If you don't have LEDs, another way to create this glow would be a small tea light, a flashlight, or anything that glows. (Just don't use a candle since it could start a fire.)

In our mystery box was also a small motor which we used to rotate a witch silhouette across the window! It looks like she's walking by the window every so often, really fun!

Since not everyone has the motor of course, another neat trick is to just use a cardboard cutout against the window to create a silhouette of whatever you want inside.

We had a little hot glue leftover, so we used a silicone mold and made some tombstones with it! This is surprisingly easy. Just put the hot glue directly in the mold and wait until it cools. Pop them out and paint!

The most fun was painting the house. We used a lighter gray for the siding, which later got dirtied up with a dark paint wash and then highlighted with some dry-brushing. The door and roof got the same treatment.

This part takes a bit of practice but the best part is the paint is cheap and you can always try again. Don't like how the door came out? Just repaint it again! Practice on some other cardboard as well to get the feel for it.

After base coating the foam in the black Mod Podge, the base got painted to look like an autumn yard. Green grass, a dirt path, the rocks got painted as well.

This is all done using simple and cheap acrylic paints that you can get at any craft store or using the links in Step 1.

The last step was to add some small details like a wispy ghost coming out of the chimney, some black cats, more tombstones, and some fall pumpkins!

Not bad for cardboard, right? We can't wait to do more of these types of projects. You should try it too!

For more details on how we built this, consider checking out the full YouTube video in the first step. We have many more projects on our Instructables page and our YouTube channel. 🎃💀👻