Posted on: October 23 2026
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Note: “This is an Expressive Art invitation for exploring shadow parts with intention, curiosity and kindness. However, please feel free to make it your own. This structure is meant to act as an invitation, or, an inspo - but the real magic comes from within - your own inner wisdom, knowing, intuition, sensations, body, creativity, ideas, and so on and so forth. The tangible actions in this practice will be creating a diorama of a haunted house, and little rooms / homes for the parts that come forward. Examples of parts / monsters: anxiety, grief, loneliness, sadness. I would recommend working on this project over the span of a week or two, and, adding to it every couple of days.”
Step One: Opening the Practice
An opening ritual can look like many things. If you don’t already have your own, my invitation to you is to try lighting a candle and turning on music that matches the vibe you are trying to bring into this practice. Some people prefer instrumental music because they find vocals to be distracting to their own practice and art-making, that is entirely up to you.
Step Two: Setting an Intention
Try setting a timer for 2 minutes and write out everything that comes into your mind - an unfiltered stream of consciousness. Then, after 2 minutes is up, step away from the paper and move your body in whatever way feels nourishing for you - this could look like stretching, your favourite stim right now, shaking different parts of your body, jumping up and down, laying on the ground, snapping your fingers, dancing (the possibilities are endless, and completely up to you). When it feels right, come back to your paper and circle 5 words that stand out to you, and re-write them onto a separate page. Try to turn these words into sentences - like a low-stakes poem. Read the poem aloud 3 times and check in with how the poem lands in your body. Depending on how you feel about this poem - this could be your intention for your art-making session today.
Step Three: Art-Making
For this activity, you will likely need scissors, some sort of glue (personally, I prefer hot glue gun), and cardboard - everything else, is up to you.
You can go about this in a couple of different ways, the two main ways being: (1) Create rooms individually and then put them all together in the end, or, (2) Create your haunted house structure and the framework for the rooms inside of the house and add in. The first option leaves you with a lot more space to get funky with your ideas and play around with the idea of what a house is and looks like, essentially, there is a pretty good chance you’re going to create a weird house - this can be fun. For this option, you might want to set a limit to rooms or a time limit, unless you want this to just be an on-going project of never-ending-rooms - this can also be fun. The second option is organically utilizing the structure of the house and the predetermined rooms inside the house as the container for the project - ie. because you have a predetermined number of rooms, you know how many rooms and monsters inside of the rooms that you will be creating from the beginning, which will make it much easier to determine the end of the project (when you fill all the rooms). We’ll be using the second option for the sake of this blog post, but again, feel free to do whatever feels right for you.
You can check out these videos to get a more in-depth introduction to dioramas and some ideas for ways to go about creating your own haunted house:
Creative Cuts - Everything You Need to Start Building Dioramas (Beginner Guide!)
Nomxian - Using ONLY $10 to make a realistic diorama (insane results…) │ | In-Depth DIY Tutorial
Black Magic Craft - DON'T GO IN THE BASEMENT a Miniature Horror Diorama Build
Wicked Makers - We made a Barbie NIGHTMARE DOLLHOUSE for Halloween!
Step Three .5: ”Summoning” the “Monsters”
Essentially, we are working with the different parts, emotions and experiences that we often don’t want to spend time with - I’ll really encourage that you don’t dive into anything that is too activating or too much to handle on your own (eg. I might work with general anxiety, and, I might not work with a 10/10 distressing trauma from my childhood). However, this is your project, everything is your choice, so use your own discretion.
I’m going to use sadness as an example for further instructions on this step. To personify sadness, to further develop sadness as a character and the room they live in, I’m going to take some time to get to know it a little better. I would grab a piece of paper and write out what sadness feels like to me:
What does sadness feel like in my body?
When was the last time I felt sadness?
How did I know I was feeling sad?
What kinds of actions or behaviours was I doing when I was feeling sad?
What kind of thoughts was I having? What kinds of urges or cravings did I notice in my experience of sadness?
What did sadness feel like in my spirit?
As I am answering these questions, I am writing the answers down in whatever way makes sense to me. Then, I am taking a moment to notice what I feel in my body in the present moment as I am writing out and remembering the experiences I’ve had with sadness. Then, I am asking:
What shape would this sensation I am feeling right now be?
What colour? What texture?
What sounds would it make?
How would it move?
Does it feel familiar or like something completely new and unknown?
Next, I am creating a rough sketch, or, writing out the details, of what this sensation would look like as a physical entity. That becomes the monster or the character for the room (ie. the personification or representation of sadness).
To figure out what the room looks like, I might write more answers to curious questions out:
What kinds of things would this character like? What would they not life?
How do they spend their days? How do they spend their nights?
What kind of music do they listen to? What kind of movies do they watch?
Do they hang out with people? Creatures? Animals? Plants? No one?
Where do they live? What colours would they decorate their house with?
How much time do they spend in that room?
After I write out all of these things, I might take some space from the writing and move around a bit, or, work on the character a bit. Then, I would come back to the writing and circle the words that stand out to me most, and I would use these words to help design / inspire the room this character will be living in in my haunted house.
Step Four (Optional): Harvesting
In Expressive Art practices, the harvesting portion often acts as a time to reflect and give/take from the art-making process or the piece that was created. Try asking yourself:
What felt significant to me within the art-making process today? What stood out?
What did I like? What did I not like? How did I know that I liked/didn’t like these things?
If my character or their room had a message for me, what would it be?
Is there anything from today’s practice that I would like to take with me into day-to-day life?
Step Five: Closing
I would highly recommend spending some time sending some gratitude to the part, emotion or experience that came out for the art-making session; also, thank yourself for carving out the time to spend time with yourself in an intentional way. Blow out your candle, if you lit one. And, do whatever else you feel is right in that moment as part of your closing ritual. Take a moment to reflect on where you can been on this journey before you go back to your day-to-day life. And, perhaps, set a time to do it again.
I hope you find what you are looking for in this practice. Remember, this is your own art practice, and while it may feel therapeutic, it is not meant to be or replace therapy. If you are struggling and looking for help, please reach out to someone you trust, your own therapist (if you have one), or, check out local mental health resources in your area.
Happy Halloween!
Image: Digital collage via Canva