Spiders.
I don’t love them. But I don’t hate them nearly as much as I used to. You see, living out in the country has forced me to undergo some major exposure therapy. I once found a HUGE BLACK spider crawling mere inches from where my baby sat on the living room floor.
“Along came a spider, who sat down beside her…”
I panicked. I may have screamed some obscenities. Commanding my two toddlers to STAND BACK, I pounced on the thing with the largest container within reach.
I’m not a spider-killer. But I wasn’t about to let this one go on its merry way either. I pressed the container into the carpet with all my strength, lest the spider try to escape through the carpet fibers, and I waited for my heart to stop pounding. Meanwhile, my then-3-year-old was asking for a closer look because, for some crazy reason, she LOVES spiders. How is she even related to me!?
So for this Halloween season, to celebrate my switched-at-birth daughter’s love of spiders, we decided to make some creepy spider art using marbles, pipettes, and Sharpies.
To make your creepy spider art, you will need:
- a rimmed cookie sheet
- masking tape
- black tempera paint
- thick white paper
- a marble
- a pipette, spoon, or eyedropper (something to drop blobs of paint)
- a black marker
First, tape your art paper onto the cookie sheet with loops of masking tape on the back. You don’t want your paper sliding around. Drizzle some black paint all the way around the outside of your paper. You want enough paint to coat the marble, but not so much that it runs all over the place when you tilt the pan.
Next, you will create the spider web. Place the marble anywhere on your pan and tilt the cookie sheet in all directions, allowing the marble to pick up paint from the edges and leave black streaks as it rolls across your paper. Younger children may need help, since the marble can easily go flying if the pan is moved too quickly.
When you are satisfied with your web, use the pipette (or spoon or eyedropper) to make some large black blobs. These will be your spiders.
Set your creepy spider art aside and wait for the paint to dry completely. Then use the black marker to add legs to the spiders’ bodies. Obviously, this is a good time to discuss the 8-legged nature of spiders. Toddlers can practice counting as they draw the legs. My 5-year-old made sure to leave one poor spider with only six legs because he had lost the other two in a terrible accident.
