What Halloween is complete without spiders and eyeballs? Instead of spending time and fortune at the store looking for decorations everyone on the block has, why not make it a family project and create your own decorations this year? The time will be better spent and more money can go towards the holidays that follow. Plus, it could start a new tradition that your family looks forward to every year. I will be adding more easy handmade Halloween ideas soon. This year I’m teaching my children all about reduce, reuse, and recycle so we are taking out a lot of prior decorations and finding stuff around the house to add to them. We have purchased very few items this year, but are coming up with very unique decorations that my children are extra proud of. They love to say to everyone, “We made that!”
First, let’s start with the easiest. We had packages of ping pong balls that we never used because my husband decided to put a light over the pool table which was where the folding ping pong table laid on before. We can’t very well play ping pong with a billiard light overhead, so I painted eyes on the unused ping pong balls with Sharpie markers. You make the pupil with a black sharpie. Then you make the iris with brown, blue, green, pink, or one of each. We made cat eyes even. Use a red sharpie to draw squiggles from the back of the eye to the half line of the ball to represent the blood vessels. As you can see in the first image, we made quite a variety of different eyes and just placed them in our regular decor bowl.
For the spiders, you will need everything in image #3. The list is as follows:
pipe cleaners (2 for each spider) bag of wiggle eyes wire cutters bag of craft pom poms hot glue gun (if children are helping it is best you have one with a low heat setting and supervise closely)
My kids enjoyed making the spiders in purples, oranges, browns and of course, black. Image #2 shows some that we made. You can choose to do them in all colors or stick to just black. They even have sparkly pipe cleaners and pom poms which should make for some interesting looking spiders, but we were just using what we already had.
Step 1: Cut the 2 pipe cleaners in half using the wire cutters.
Step 2: Line up the 4 pieces as shown in image #4 and hot glue a pom pom in the center.
Step 3: Holding the pom pom with the pipe cleaners, fold the legs in the middle over your finger as displayed in image #5. Then separate the legs. Do the same on both sides.
Step 4: Glue on 2 wiggle eyes and your spider should be complete, or you could glue a second pom pom on the backside for a more realistic effect. Then hang your spider on webs outside or scatter them throughout the house. We have them in our half bath on the towel rack, basket, and small table as you can see in image #2.
Now that you are looking at image #2, let’s talk about the decor in there. We used prior Halloween napkins that are no longer a set (because others have been thrown away for stains) to cover a small table and to wrap a spare roll of toilet tissue. We used prior cloth candy buckets that never held much candy to store the air freshener, lotions, and hand sanitizers. The cat you see is actually a flashlight that doesn’t work anymore. We used a mini candy bucket to store the nail brush next to the soap. Naturally we added the handmade spiders. The only thing that was newly purchased was a package of gel clings for $3.00 at CVS. Just use your imagination and have fun. It’s amazing what you and your family will come up with.