Freaky & Fun Friday - How To Make Spiders and Web Part 1

How To Make Creepy Spiders

What you will need:

1.5" Styrofoam balls

8 Twistee Ties per each ball

Black paint

Needle nose pliers

This week is part 1 the spiders, and next week we will do part 2, the web.  These spiders are fairly easy to make and extra creepy looking!  

To start you will need to remove the paper or plastic from all of your Twistee Ties.  I am not sure I want to direct you in the same method I used to do it as I ended up burning my thumb horribly, however if you are careful and not rushed you should be safe.  The only reason I burnt myself is because I was so rushed while I did it and I know that now.  If your ties are covered in paper then the paper can easily be ripped off.  If they are covered in plastic then it doesn't come off so easily.  What I did was use a lighter outside and burnt the plastic off of each one.  This method was working great but was time consuming and so I decided to start doing 8 ties at a time and this is when I accidently dripped burning melted plastic on my thumb and caused myself excruciating pain!!!  If you decide to use the lighter method please make sure you do it outside so you don't burn your house down and only do one tie at a time.  Please learn from my mistake because this happened yesterday and my thumb is still killing me, I don't want anyone else to follow suit.  

Once your ties are all down to bare metal they need to be formed using needle nose pliers.  At a little less then half way fold it over and pinch the crease as tight as possible with the pliers.  Then one side should be longer then the other side, on the longer side fold then end over about a quarter of an inch and pinch the crease as tight as possible with the pliers. See image below for an example

You need 8 wires per spider so you can either do all the wires first or do 1 spider at a time, your choice.  

Take one foam ball and 8 wires that have been folded and ready to go.  By folding the one end over a quarter of an inch it makes the wire sturdier and helps to hold it in the styrofoam ball better.  Stick 4 wires in each side of the ball, sticking the end that is folded over in first.  Your spider should now look like this

It is better to add the wires before you paint the spider black for 2 reasons.  1 the legs give you something to hold onto while you paint the styrofoam ball black and 2 as long as you have each wire exactly how you want it when you add the paint, the paint will help to seal the wire in the ball making it unnecessary to use glue.  If you try to adjust the legs after you paint this will break your seal.  

Once your spider has been painted it should look like the pic above.  That is it for one spider, how many you make is up to you, I made 6.  Next week we will make the web that we are going to add these spiders too, and no it does not involve buying a bag of Halloween spider webs! lol 

Have FUN!