Se7en Slinky Spinning Swinging Spiders…

So we have a little hood obsessed with beetles, bugs and creepy crawlies in general and the house is rocking to the “gentle beat” of Incy Wincy Spider. Recently we made bed bug hand warmers, this time we decided to make dangly spiders. Here is what we are aiming for:

Let’s Meet the Players:

For the project you need to a nice starchy glue and I always have wall paper glue on hand, I use it for making endless pinatas! Pop the powder into a flat dish and just add water and mix until you have the texture you are after.

Paints and Droppers.

Pipe cleaners cut in half for legs.

Buttons and toothpicks.

And Let’s Play the Game:

Step 1:
We began our project with a page of newspaper that we scrunched up into a ball. And then we dipped them into our glue… to make them squishy.

Step 2: We tore up some sheets of toilet paper (I am all for using materials from around the house!) and wrapped it around the ball of paper. We wrapped and smeared with glue and smeared some more and wrapped some more until we had a nice smooth finish. And a couple of bug bodies.

Step 3: We dripped and dropped our paints onto each body and we ended up with some really bright bug bodies!

Step 4: We waited and waited for them to dry, mid-winter is probably not the best time for this sort of paper-mache project. Eventually (after waiting all weekend and the weather just getting wetter and wetter) I popped them in the oven at 100 degrees Celsius for a hour or so. That did the trick.

Step 5: We used a skewer to poke holes into the bodies and then poked pipe cleaners in the holes for legs. (I know spiders have eight legs but we were running out of pipe cleaners!!!)

Step 6: For eyes we chose some buttons and popped them onto toothpicks. Then we popped the toothpicks into our bugs…

Step 7: Finally we had se7en spiders and this last bit was a bit tricky for the kidlets: I threaded some elastic thread, through the bodies, with a needle, so that the spiders bounce when you hang them up. It would have helped if we kept our spiders a bit smaller, but we managed and here are our se7en spiders: