The Zombie Lover's Guide to Arts and Crafts

In a way, all arts and crafts help us prepare for the zombie apocalypse. When the ravenous undead walk the streets, crafting know-how is sure to be a hot commodity amongst surviving humans. Whether your expertise provides food, shelter, warm blankets, or just a touch of beauty in the post-apocalyptic wasteland, your crafty skills and DIY spirit will help make you welcome with any group of survivors.

Who will decorate the apocalypse?
Photo by Cassandra Gregg

Zombie-themed crafting projects, though, serve double duty in the canny crafter's arsenal. A handmade zombie trinket may make a fun gift or conversation piece, but it also helps spread zombie awareness in your community, creating a safer and more prepared society. When you turn your talents toward the production of zombie-themed goods, you perform a valuable service by spreading the word about the zombie peril.

Thanks to concerted efforts by a wide variety of concerned artists such as yourself, our culture is becoming better prepared and more aware of the looming undead threat than ever before. Whatever your skill level, whatever your chosen medium, you can contribute to our blossoming era of zombie preparedness through your craft.

On this page, I have gathered zombie-themed art and craft projects for every type of crafter. I hope that you enjoy many hours of crafting in our golden, pre-zombie paradise, and greet the inevitable zombie scourge as well prepared as yarn and glue can make you!

Knitting is a great way to create custom zombie-themed gifts or useful and decorative items for your own home. Small knit zombies are a quick, inexpensive gift guaranteed to foster enhanced awareness of the zombie peril in the recipient.

While you're knitting, you're building a skill set that will come in handy when your apocalypse team needs warm scarves and blankets. You're also building a skill set that will come in handy when a zombie needs to be stabbed in the eye with a long needle. Win-win!

Knitting: a post-apocalyptic life skill coffee mug

A long pair of knitting needles will be a great weapon of last resort when the zombies arrive. Lightweight and portable, knitting needles are only effective at very close range. If a zombie gets that close to you, which I sincerely hope it won't, thank your lucky stars that you're a knitter and try to aim for the eyes.

Knitting and zombies have both seen a surge in popularity in recent years, and concerned knitters have turned their needles toward projects that enhance zombie awareness. Here are some of the coolest zombie projects, patterns, and tutorials the web has to offer.

A crochet hook, while not as useful for zombie-stabbing as a pair of knitting needles, can certainly be used to create a near-endless assortment of zombie-related projects. When the zombie apocalypse begins, you can use your crochet skills to produce warm garments and bedding for your fellow survivors.

Crochet or Die Mousepad

Until then, a crocheted zombie doll or other zombie-themed item makes a terrific gift for a special zombie survivalist. Crochet a few creepy little zombies for your own home, and you'll always have a conversation starter, as well as an excellent reminder to be prepared for Z-Day.

Hooked on zombie crochet? Here are some patterns and tutorials for zombie crochet projects. Fill your house with crocheted zombies, or crochet a zombie for the preparedness enthusiast in your life.

An accomplished seamstress will be a welcome addition to any zombie survival team. The little zombies you create now with your needle and thread will serve as excellent preparation for stitching the gashes and slashes members of your party endure while fleeing from zombies.

Please, though, do remember that stitching a bite does little good. If a member of your party is bitten, perhaps you can sew him or her a cuddly doll for comfort in the face of certain death.

Fold, Spindle, and Mutilate Your Way Through the Zombie Apocalypse

Paper is a great medium. Widely available, economical, and versatile, paper lends itself well to many crafts. From scrapbooking to origami, simple cut-out dolls to sinister papier-mâché masterpieces, there's a zombie paper craft to suit any zombie enthusiast's budget, abilities, and tastes.

In a post-apocalyptic zombie-riddled wasteland, you'll be able to put your paper mache skills to good use crafting lightweight, form-fitting body armor for your fellow survivors. For now, you can use those skills to create zombie themed art pieces, thereby enhancing zombie awareness in your community and making us all a little safer.

Scrapbooking is a terrific craft for zombie preparedness devotees. A zombie-themed scrapbook is a great way to preserve all the golden memories of your current life in our zombie-free utopia. Once the apocalypse begins, you'll be glad to have a memento of a time when zombies were just a bit of decorative flair!

Origami zombies are less dangerous than real zombies, but no less fierce. Zombie aficionados ages eight and up will quickly amass a foul army of folded fiends. And papercuts are a great way to harden your fingertips against the inevitable approach of the undead scourge.

Learn to fold a zombie named "Seymour Guts" in this easy-to-follow video tutorial from Wired.

Soapmaking is a great survival skill to pick up before the zombie apocalypse begins! Fast or slow, magically powered or mad-scientist spawned, zombies are absolutely guaranteed to stink. Once the apocalypse is in full swing, you'll stink, too. So will everyone you know.

Learn to make your own soap now, and you can keep yourself and your friends smelling civilized in the midst of full-blown zombie mayhem. Make your soap using cool zombie-themed molds, and your soapmaking skills can keep you alert against the looming undead menace, enhancing your survival odds even before the apocalypse begins!

Soapmaking will be a terrific skill to have in the dirty, stinky zombie apocalypse. Learn to make your own soap now, and you'll face the apocalypse smelling like a rose. Or at least not smelling like the innards of the walking dead. Bonus: with some zombie-themed soap molds, you can enjoy little soap zombies while you wait for the real thing to arrive.

Drawing and Painting the Living Dead

The ability to reproduce three-dimensional objects in a two-dimensional space, commonly realized as drawing or painting, is a great zombie apocalypse survival skill. Drawings of your loved ones as zombies may inspire them to add a zombie preparedness regimen to their routines today, before it's too late. And once the zombie apocalypse arrives, you can avoid a spot on the front lines by making yourself useful creating colorful and detailed 'Missing Person' posters. All that practice painting zombies will give you the skills you'll need to portray those missing people "as they may appear today."

Traditional guides to drawing and painting often overlook important parts of the apocalyptic artist's repertoire. Seeping wounds, flayed flesh, foully decayed grins... these are the things the hapless zombie-oriented art student is often left to figure out in solitude. Here are some guides that won't leave you facing the zombie apocalypse alone and in the dark.

Have you finished a zombie crafting project or two in preparation for the zombie menace? Are you planning something creatively, craftily creepy? Here's the spot to air your comments and questions about darkly delightful crafts!