Say Hello to my Little Friend!-Halloween Spider Decoration

I think we have made this spider 4 years in a row now. The kids love it and I have to admit, I do too! This year, I gave him shorter legs. The longer legs were such a hassle as they would catch any little breeze and fly up into the gutters! So, this year, our spider friend has a fat body and short little legs (no, I did not use myself as a model for this spider!)

I found a great tutorial that I can not improve on :) The only thing I do suggest is if you decide to hang yours from the front porch or a tree, be sure to really tape the trash bags in the area where you will make holes for wire or yarn to hold him. I lay a few layers of tape (unless it's good duct tape and I will make only one layer) overtop of each other and pierce through the layers and the bag to slip my warn or wire through.

Have fun and enjoy trying to figure out a face for yours! I realized ours looks a little bummed this year. Oh well, with the economy and all, I am sure he is feeling all our pain! ;)

It's a Little Batty-Make Your Own Halloween Bat Decoration

I made this bat last year with help from my kids. He's too cute to not repeat this year. Very easily made, and most of us have these items just lying around.



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.

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.

Say Hello to My Little Friend

We made this spider last year and the kids (including the neighbor kids) loved it so much, it became a tradition now :) It is so easy and fun once you have it up. One thing I would do differently is place the legs on before stuffing it. You might want to play with it a bit, though.

You can make this yourself by visiting Cindy's Porch

Itsy Bitsy Spider Went up the Water Spout!! EEEEKKKK!!!

I made this fella today. He is hanging on my front porch :) I got the idea from From Cindy's Porch: Our Halloween Spider He hangs over my pumpkin and cute lil gargoyles :)