SUPPLIES & TOOLS:
- Assortment glass beads or plastic beads, (colors of your choice) Glass bead-160 for the legs
- Jewelry wire - 18 gauge
- Acrylic paints - color to match the beads for the spider body.
- Small paintbrush
- 2 Small pliers
- Wire cutters
- X-Acto knife
- Quick Grip glue
- 1 Bag of air-dry Crayola® clay
- Beading tray is helpful but not required
DIRECTIONS:
- Figure out the patterns you would like for the legs. Each leg will need about 20 beads for the glass bead spiders and about 10 beads for the plastic spiders.
- Make sure you have enough beads to make 8 matching legs.
- Cut your wire for the legs to be about 5" long. Using your pliers, make a small twist at the end of the wire to keep the beads from sliding off. Place enough beads to create one leg. Make a big lope at the end so the beads won't fall off. Keep the leg this way until you have made all 8 legs.
- Take all 8 legs and twist the end wires together with your pliers. Leave a twisted stem of about 1".
- Take the air clay and make a small body for the spider, wrapping the stem of the wired joined legs. Make sure the wires are completely covered by the air clay. You can make the bodies different shapes and sizes. Some spiders bodies are shaped like a letter 8. Other bodies are oval with the body larger at one end. Average size body is about 1 1/2" long. Let these dry overnight.
- Use acrylic paint to paint the entire air-clay body the base color of your beads. Let it dry.
- Starting in the middle of the spider body, use clear glue or Quick Grip glue to apply the beads. Let it dry shortly before continuing around the side of the body when applying the beads. As you apply the beads, roll the body on its side so that the beading area is face up. This helps with gravity to allow the beads to dry and not slide.
- Once you have completely covered the body and the glue is dry, you can position the legs.
- When deciding on the placement of beads, it works best to have them contrasting the adjacent beads for a better look. You can also layer the beads on the back to create depth on the body.