How to make a big hairy spider for Halloween

Do you ever get in a crafty mood? It strikes me about once a year. Usually around Christmas.

This year it struck at Halloween.

I was supposed to pick up plastic spiders and glow sticks to help decorate the marketing area of our office. Easy peasy. No crafting necessary.

Except I went to the wrong store. I went to Jo-Anne Fabrics. I thought they would have Halloween decor. And it's near my house. The Halloween stuff was pretty much gone - replaced by Christmas!

As I'm wandering around the store figuring out what to do I decided I would skip the little plastic spiders and make two giant spiders instead. Two big, hairy spiders. With googly eyes. I had it pictured in my head. I would get the biggest styrofoam ball I could find, a feather boa, floral wire, felt, glue and googly eyes. And then I would recruit the teenager to help me.

They came out super cute! Big, hairy and not too scary.

BIG HAIRY SPIDER 
makes 2
1 Large Styrofoam ball cut in half (the bread knife in the kitchen works well.)
1 6' black feather boa
8 Felt Squares "9" x 12"
16 Floral Wires - Dark brown (comes in a pack of 20)
Craft Glue
Black Spray Paint
2 packets of large googly eyes
Scotch tape
Optional: needle and black thread to sew the legs

10 Steps:
1. Cut the foam ball in half
2. Spray paint each half of the ball black (let dry)
3. Cut the feather boa in half. Cover each half of the black ball with glue. Wrap the feathers around it. Trim the feathers (give it a crew cut!)
4. Cut each felt piece in half creating 4.5" x 12" pieces.
5. Roll the felt around the floral wire so it creates a 12" tube around the wire.
5. Glue the seam (hold together with a few pieces of scotch tape until the glue dries.)
6. Optional: sew the seam with a loose running stitch. This is what we did because the glue was not drying fast enough for us!
7. Repeat this 16 times to you have 8 legs for each spider
8. Wrap about 1" of the wire around one end of the spider leg so the felt won't fall off the wire.
9. Take the other end which will be a few inches long and insert in the styrofoam. We doubled it up before poking it in the styrofoam to make it more secure. Place 4 legs on each side. Bend the wire to shape the legs.
10. Last thing to do is to glue on the googly eyes.

That's it! It's fun to do with kids. but beware. The feathers have a way of getting everywhere. Nothing the vacuum can't take care of.

Elli and I had a blast running around the neighborhood taking pics of the spider. OK. That statement is not entirely true. It was more like, "Mom, I'm in my slippers. Can I go now?" ha ha ha. Just keeping it real.

Happy Halloween!!!

-Kris