Spooky Spider Craft

It’s spooky season! Kiddo and I were thrilled to walk through Michael’s and pick out supplies to decorate the house.

She loves Halloween and loves to decorate so this was a great activity to get her involved in the process.

Remember, when doing art with kids, it’s very much about the process and not the end result. This isn’t a craft that has to be perfect. Instead, focus on the steps and talking throughout the process. Art is actually one of my favorite times because it sparks so many conversations and ideas as we work through the process together. Beyond that, it’s just calming and fun!

These cute little spider webs were pretty cheap. You can check out my Benable list for the items that we used, but feel free to make it your own as well.

All you’re going to need is:

-          Different sized embroidery hoops (just cheap wooden ones will do!)

-          Black paint

-          Paint brushes

-          Paint tray or a cup

-          Black thread or string

-          Black pipe cleaners

-          Hot glue (optional)

The process started off simple enough…

You start off by painting all of the hoops black. You don’t have to paint the backs if you don’t want to, but make sure to get the inside and outsides of the circles. Just twist the metal screw to release them and paint them separately. I let Kiddo do this part on her own and she was happy to have a job that she could take charge of.

Go ahead and let those dry before you do the next step.

When they’re ready, take the black string and lay it in lines across the hoop to make the start of the web. It took us a few tries to see what would work best. In the end, we just laid them across the inside circle. For the smaller two hoops, we just had to put the larger outside circle on top and tighten it to get the strings to stay in place. For the largest hoop, they seemed loose so I added a little hot glue to make sure they were tight.

This is important, if they aren’t tight, the next step won’t work correctly. Since I had the hot glue out, I did trim up the extra string on all of three hoops and put a little dab of glue on the back to prevent them from slipping out.

Ok, this is where it get a little tricky. Kiddo tried her thing and was getting frustrated so I stepped in. In the end, we figured out that the best way to get the webbed appearance was to take a piece of cut string and wrap it around each line. It didn’t make them line up exactly straight, but again, this is the process of figuring things out. When we got to the end of the other thread, we just tied them to make a knot.

Maybe we would have done something else to make it cleaner when we connected it, but this worked. Besides, we still have spiders to add and they will cover up those little knots.

It’s spider time!

Ok, this was probably Kiddo’s favorite part (and mine, too!). Take your pipe cleaners and you’re going to want to cut them down. I made 3 sizes of spiders. One by cutting the pipe cleaners in half, one by cutting them in thirds, and the last I cut into quarters.

You need a total of 4 pipe cleaners in each length. If you’re not happy with the length, you can still trim it down until you’re happy. This part’s easy. You just take the pipe cleaners and divide them in half, then make an X. Give it a twist so they stick together, and then maneuver the legs and bend them to make them look as creepy or as friendly as you like.

Go ahead and put the little guy onto you web and attach as you see fit. I was able to just hook mine on there by the legs. For placement, I put him right over those knots from the string and it covered them up perfectly!

And there you have it, a cute little Halloween craft great for kid participation!!