Make a Spider and a Bat for Halloween

For the past two years, we have had a new tradition of making a big spider out of trash bags to hang on our front porch. It is fun to make and design a different face for the big fella each year :) To see my post from last year, go here. For directions on how to make the spider yourself, go to this new link Creepy Spider . One thing I did do differently this year was to put the legs on the spider BEFORE stuffing it. To me, it was much easier. Also, if you are going to hang the spider from your porch, or tree, etc...don't overstuff as I did-lol! We are in the process of figuring out how to hang him without the plastic ripping (and it might also be, this year I used Great Value bags instead of Aldi-perhaps Aldi's are stronger?).

Now, on to this cute lil fella:

Isn't he just adorable? I call him Batty (or maybe that is the name I heard when my husband was describing me to a friend? hmmm....)
He is super easy to make. Take one black trash bag (all of ours are the 30 gal. size). Take a corner of one bag at the closed end and make a 'pigtail' out of that corner. This is going to be an ear, so you can make the ear as big or little as you like. I think bats with big ears are cute, so I made mine sort of big (though, Imust admit, if my bag were green, my bat would look more like Yoda-which would be cool too :).  Use a twist tie to make the pigtail. Do the same with the other corner of the closed end of the bag.

Next, fill your bat's head. Newspaper is terrific for this and you can reuse it in your fireplace after Halloween. Or, I use the colored ads which I will not burn in my fireplace. Be sure to recycle these when you are done with Batty! I would say you want to fill it about 1/3 of the way of the total bag. As you can see by my picture, his head is about 1/3 the size of his whole body. Use a twist tie again to close off the head. Now, stuff the body. And, once again, use one of those niflty twist ties to close him up. I think he looks cute with a little tassle of bag at the bottom :)

Now, since this was my first year making Batty, I was not too sure how to do the wings. My 2nd oldest DD gave me the idea of just cutting diagonally across another trash bag. It did work, but I hated waisting that other side of that bag. I might have to make some small spiders of something :) But, I cut from one open end to the opposite closed and of the trashbag. You might have to snip some plastic a bit so your wings open right. Then, look at your wings and decide which way they will hang from the back of Batty. Use a stapler to staple the wings to his back (if you happen to catch some newspaper when you staple, it helps to support the wings and keep the plastic from tearing).

Now, you can have fun making his face. I used wide tape to attach his face and made sure it covered all my paper so it would not get ruined in any rain or dew.

Then, you can attach some string (you might tape around the holes or perhaps you can find a better way than I suggest and if you do, please let me know ;) and hang Batty in a nice place where he can hang out and let his wings flap in the breeze. Oh, one more thing I did is to place some washers on the back side of Batty's wings...this really helps to keep the wings from winding around and around when they are being blown by the breeze. I just taped them on to the very bottom corner of each wing.