You Can't Look Dignified When You're Having Fun

First things first, gather your supplies:

1. Hot glue gun 2. Glue sticks (Target brand pictured here, but I really like Gorilla glue sticks) 3. Pipe cleaners (6 per spider) 4. 1 sheet black felt 5. Purple and white puffy paint 6. Yellow spherical beads (4 per spider, big enough to be eyes) 7. Extra fine tip Sharpie  8. 3″ neon green pom pom (1 per spider) 9. 1″ neon green pom poms (6 per spider) 10. scissors (not pictured)

Start with the slowest bit.

In a surprise twist, it turned out that waiting for the puffy paint to dry was the most time consuming part about this craft, so get it out of the way first.  Maybe even the day before, if you can swing it.  It doesn’t take fully overnight to dry, but it does take several hours.

The mouth should be just over an inch in width.  I found the easiest way to draw it out was to draw the upper and lower lips, then connect the sides.

For the teeth, it’s really just a few small squeezes of the bottle.  Just don’t overdo it, as that will a) get everywhere and b) increase your already long drying time.

Note: while this is puffy paint it actually absorbs into the felt and dries flat.  While it does this, however, set it aside for the actual spider construction!

Make some legs

Each leg is made of a single pipe cleaner folded into thirds, and then twisted together. I had a great deal of success taking the last third and simply wrapping it around the other two thirds.  Make six of these.

Build yourself a spider!

Take your 3″ pom pom and spread it open such that you can see the center bundle.  Pat it flat, then one at a time glue each individual leg to the center in the above pattern.  

After your legs are attached, Slather them with just a comical amount of hot glue- you don’t want these suckers moving anywhere.  While that large pool of hot glue is drying (but after giving it just a few seconds so you don’t burn yourself), gently take the pom pom fluff from the front and back sides of the spider and press them on to the glue.  This will hide your leg joints.

Attach the feet!

It only takes a dab of hot glue to attach the feet, but make sure there’s enough that you can fluff the 1″ pom poms all the way around the bottom of the pipe cleaner.

Once you’ve done this and the glue has dried, you can bend the legs such that the spider looks actually like a spider!  Take this opportunity to clear away any fine hot glue strands that are lingering.

Now on to the face!

Once your puffy paint has dried, you’ll want to cut out around the mouth, but leave some felt at the top to glue your eyes.  You’ll want to draw a line of hot glue all the way across the top.

Next, press your beads into the glue, starting in the center and moving out.  The center two beads should line up with the two teeth.

Next up, simply take that extra fine tip sharpie and draw the black part of the eyes on the beads, and then trim off the excess felt!

Finally, put your face on your spider!

This is pretty straightforward.  Just dab a generous amount of hot glue on the back of the face, and place it where you’d like the face to be on your spider!  I recommend placing it a little higher than you’d think, as gravity does tend to take over and your face will sink a little bit.