DIY Black Cat Halloween Decoration

DIY on how to make black cat Halloween decoration.  Super easy craft to make with a die cut machine or laser cutter. All you need is paper and string!

Cats and candy, who doesn’t love in that combo?  I’m going to show you how to make Halloween Black Cat Garland, perfect for decorating this holiday while I eat a bunch of candy.

Nibble Nibble.
Reese’s Pieces, yum.
Twizzlers, yum.
Jolly Rancher lollipop, yum.
Kit Kats, Peanut Butter Cups, yum.
Please help. 
It’s Halloween time and I can’t stop nibbling on candy.

 This Halloween I wanted to have fun making some new decorations that fit my cat love, so I decided to make some black cat garland.

At our studio we’re lucky enough to have access to a laser cutter.  If you aren’t familiar with laser cutters it uses a laser to cut out materials, very quickly and very precise.  It can cut through practically everything from acrylic, cardboard, rubber, nylon, paper, aluminum, mdf and more.  Think of the possibilities!  I made 40 cutouts of cats within minutes that have very intricate details.  If I was hand cutting this would have took me forever and never would have looked as good.  I do love using die cut craft machines as well but for this cat garland I wanted a specific customized design that I couldn’t already find a die for.

First you’ll need to find a design you like or custom create it as a vector file in Adobe Illustrator. There you’ll define the lines on the design on what gets cut out and what doesn’t.    Once it’s set up, you’ll send it to the laser cut, put your material in and watch the magic.

The laser cutter is a serious machine that has to be watched.  It’s very powerful so everyone at the studio needs to be trained on how to use it.  If you look closely here you’ll see the laser is cutting out the design very quickly. At this time I was a little worried that the whiskers would get cut off as they were very thin.

But when the laser cutter finished I saw the whiskers worked out!  This cat was cut out in seconds, I can’t imagine how long that hair on it’s back would have took me to cut out by hand.  After this I keep putting paper in the laser cutter and letting do it’s job until I have the amount of cats I need (I never can have enough cats).

Once I got home I turned it into garland with some black and white twine I found in the dollar Halloween aisle. 

Along with some mason jars I filled with lights and candy I quickly had a fun decorated area.  I’ve been putting this garland all over from the windows to the doorway to walls to around Matthew’s bike.  He doesn’t appreciate that, I have no idea why.

Hope you guys liked this quick tutorial and I hope you’re getting excited for Halloween!