Life Hacks

DIY Digital Creations for a
Spooktacular Halloween.

From digital pumpkin carving to spine-tingling virtual backgrounds,
these simple crafts are so fun, it’s scary.

Whether you celebrate by nailing a killer homemade costume, perfecting your jack-o’-lantern’s toothy grin or testing out a new pumpkin spice recipe, Halloween offers countless ways to get creative. This year, we’re turning our attention to spooky digital projects that are super-easy, just as fun as the real deal—and way less messy. Read on for inspiration, plus how to use S Pen to put your personal stamp on the final product.

Spookify your social feed

The real Halloween party this year will be happening on social media. And one surefire way to stand out? Giving your posts a spooky twist that’s uniquely you. You could turn yourself into a monster in a Halloween profile picture, add a skeleton to your videos, have a “ghost” pop up in your Story. Not an artist? Plaster Halloween-themed stickers onto your photos and videos. This time of year, nothing gets ‘likes’ like the frights. (As for captions, we recommend a Halloween pun or five.)

Call the video chat with a haunted virtual background

Why dial into your video meeting from a regular old home office when you could greet coworkers from a horror-filled dungeon or mad scientist’s laboratory? With so many people doing video calls these days, there’s a new place to express your seasonal spirit: the video chat virtual background.

An animation featuring instructions from the PENUP app. It begins with the twilight sky with the moon in the background, now with a thick black line drawn in the foreground. Then we see more thin lines emerging from the thick black line. It's a tree with leafless branches. Finally, it shows two black trees in the foreground in front of the twilight sky.
An animation featuring instructions from the PENUP app. It begins with the spooky twilight sky scene with trees in the foreground. Then three orange and yellow circles are added to the foreground. Then outlines of jack-o'-lantern faces are added to the three orange and yellow circles. Finally, the jack-o'-lanterns are fully colored in black with their eyes and mouths glowing. The video chat virtual background is complete.
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S Pen
Natural sketching with ultra-precise detail.

Draw on photos to make a digital jack-o’-lantern

The jack-o’-lantern is the undisputed king of Halloween crafts. But while those glowing faces look great on the front porch, we’d rather skip the knives, open flames and handfuls of pumpkin guts. Enter the digital jack-o’-lantern.

Two digital jack-o'-lanterns next to each other in front of a brick wall. Their faces are illustrated digitally onto a photo of real pumpkins. There are also illustrated cobwebs and spiders in the corners of the image, a misty purple floor, and a bat with red eyes in front of a moon.
Two digital jack-o'-lanterns next to each other in front of a brick wall. Their faces are illustrated digitally onto a photo of real pumpkins. There are also illustrated cobwebs and spiders in the corners of the image, a misty purple floor, and a bat with red eyes in front of a moon.
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Treat yourself to a creative powerhouse

Spine-tingling shots and bewitching video are just the beginning with Galaxy.

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