Spiderific Halloween Garland

So I, Jane, like spiders as much as the next guy, which is to say, not very much. I appreciate that they are a critical part of the food chain and they are incredible makers, weaving such beautiful webs in short periods of time. Still, I wasn’t too happy to come face-to-face with this guy a few weeks ago at the cottage. This summer the spiders had gotten so big that they started asking when dinner was coming.

After a whole summer of fearing every spider she saw at the cottage, my oldest daughter brought this book home from the school library the other day. While there are some really cool facts in there (did you know that there are no spiders on Antarctica?) I couldn’t help but shudder at some of the pictures (do we really need to see a huge mama spider covered in a zillion baby spiders????).

In any case, all this talk of spiders got us thinking of Halloween. As I was about to place a paper egg-carton in the recycling bin I decided we could try and make some spiders of our own. So, to keep the kids busy on that rainy day, I got out the paints and set them to work. We originally planned to make all spiders, some black, some orange and the rest green. But once they were painted the orange egg cups made me think of pumpkins and the green ones Frankenstein. So we ended up with a multi-character spiderific halloween garland.

To make the Halloween garland you will need:

• paper egg carton
• paints in black, green, and orange
• yarn of the same colors
• googly eyes
• black fine-tip marker
• pencil
• knife and scissors
• glue gun
• stapler

Cut apart the egg carton. I used a steak knife to cut along the middle and then scissors for the rest. Paint the cut out egg cups, 3-4 of each color.

Once dry, glue two googly eyes on each cup (I found gluing the eyes close together rather than wide apart looked cuter). For the pumpkin we drew on a zig-zag mouth with the black marker; for the Frankenstein a mouth with cross marks and a circle on either side of its “neck”.

For the spiders we cut small triangular pieces of white paper and glued them on under the eyes to make fangs. We then made eight pompom legs (why not?) for each spider. To make the legs:

• cut an 8 inch length of yarn in one color (e.g. green) and lay it over the pencil with about one inch hanging off the end of the pencil.
• start wrapping a piece of yarn in a different color (e.g. black) at the end of the pencil, over the black yarn; wrap 20 times.
• holding the yarn in place, tie the black yarn tightly around the green yarn, knotting at least three times to hold it in place.
• carefully slide the bundle off the pencil onto scissors and gently snip through the bundle on the opposite side of the green knot.

Repeat these steps on the other end of the green yarn to create pompon feet on each end of the piece of yarn. Make three more (for a total of four) for one spider. Attach each pair of feet to a corner of the egg cup with a stapler.

To make the larger pompoms repeat the steps above but wrap the yarn around four pencils held together and wrap about 80 times to get a fuller pompom.

Hang the characters either individually on invisible line, or onto a long stretch of yarn for a garland by poking a hole through the top of the egg cup and pulling a tied off loop of yarn through. Hang in your desired location.

So, how crazy do you go with the Halloween decorations?