Nearly Instant Halloween Accessories

I love this time of year. You can find all sorts of delightfully creepy things at the store, and shops open up just for Halloween.

I bought some very inexpensive spiders and bats to make accessories. The reason I got bright, colorful spiders is that they are less disturbing to the arachnophobe in my family.
To make the hair slides- the easy way is to use bobby pins that have a gluing pad. The thing is I don't actually like using those in my hair. So I did something a little different so I could use my preferred bobby pin type-

So for there easy spider hair pins, you will need:

• Bobby pins 
• Instant type glue (I used Krazy Glue)
• White craft glue (I used Elmer's Glue All)
• Craft felt
• Plastic spiders with a largish body
• scissors

Craft felt is made out of plastic, so are the spiders. Krazy Glue works great for bonding them together. Cut 4 strips per pair of spiders of craft felt that are about 1/4 inch wide and the length of the spider body. Glue one strip to the bottom of each spider. 

Slide the other strips into the bobby pins, and spread white craft glue on the craft felt on the spider, then press the strip in the bobby pin to the spider and hold for a couple minutes. Let the glue dry. 

Wow. See? Insanely easy. Now you could do a lot to the spiders before gluing them to the bobby pins. You could cover them in glitter, or use a plastic safe metallic spray paint on them. Make them as fancy as you'd like. 

Bat necklace!

Same thing, if you want, you can absolutely glitter or paint the bat. I went with plain black for mine. 

So for this one- you will need

• Plastic bats- they come in all sorts of colors. I have some that are neon green!
• chain
• 22 gauge wire- half hard if you have it.
• round nose pliers
• wire snips
• 1/8 inch hole punch

So this is just as easy as the project above, and if you're a jewelry crafter- you might have the supplies on hand. I used some copper chain that I had, and bronze 22 gauge wire. Bronze is fairly hard compared to copper- if you're using a soft wire, lightly hammer the hooks before attaching them to the chain to harden them slightly. 

Punch a hole in the top of both wings with the hole punch. Then cut 2 1.5 inch pieces of wire and coil the top into a loop, then curl the rest into a hook with a little bit curled over at the end. 

Put one wire on each end of the chain, and slide through the holes in the bat wings. 

Back in 2011, I posted a project for Eyeball hair sticks using the plastic eyeballs that available this time of the year. That project is also an instant costume. Moms always have eyes in the back of their head! 

Argyle Spider Box

I made this design for the contest currently voting at Spoonflower - Creepy-Crawlies. There are a lot of great designs in this contest, and if you have a Spoonflower account, it's worth taking a look. Unless you suffer arachnophobia because there are a LOT of spiders.

Click on the box for a larger version. Print on card stock, cut out, score, fold, glue!

Want more spiders?
Want more Halloween?

A printable Hershey's miniature box for Halloween

Hello to everyone who found my site through Parents.com's 100 Days of Holidays!
To everyone who is a regular reader (jumps up and down excitedly) look at that!! It's so wonderful to be a collection that includes a lot of artists that I admire so much. I'm at 9 in the 19 Halloween Printables.
This set is higher dpi than the Halloween Bats Hershey's Miniature Slide Box. Click on the images for larger versions and print at 8x10. I recommend Chrome browser for in browser printing.

Assembly instructions-

I hope your Halloween is wonderful!

Spiders coloring page with some information about spiders

One of the things I love about doing this page is how much I learn in the process of doing it. The books I'll read, the stuff I'll learn in trying out new projects, and the things I learn while researching something I want to draw. Today it was spiders. What started as a spider web for Halloween led me to research spiders and webs, to learn more about orb weavers, which are the spiders which weave what we think of as a typical web. When you see a Black Widow drawn on this style web, it's inaccurate. Black Widows do weave webs, but they aren't the spiral webs. They are more unstructured. 

Orb weavers aren't venomous. They have very bad eyesight despite having 8 eyes, and they come in so many varieties and colors! You can find photos here. Some have spikes, some are very hairy. So after I finished my web, I drew a basic body for an orb spinner that can be decorated as you please with colors, spots and spikes. Click the images for larger versions.

They start their webs with by catching a breeze and silk sailing from one side to another on a roughly horizontal plane. Then then anchor that thread. The first one is shown in blue, the anchor in red. Then they do the rest of the radials, reinforcing them and making them all stronger with non-sticky thread. After the radials are laid in, they start the web. So now you know the basics to draw or embroider your own webs.