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This year, spiders and spiderwebs are TOTALLY my Halloween jam. After realizing that I’ve been cohabitating with several I don’t have the heart to kill and seeing how that kind of freaks others out, I decided to go spider everything this year! If you’re all about everything spider check out this fun DIY Punch Needle Spiderweb Rug, these easy spiderweb cupcakes, a no carve spider pumpkin with HUGE fuzzy legs, fun stacked spiderweb sugar cookies, and embroidery hoop hanging crochet spiderwebs with pompom spiders!
Have you ever seen anything in the store and just loved it right away? I was perusing the Lowe’s website when I found this awesome Haunted Living Spider Wreath. “Oh holy heck, this thing is awesome,” I thought, and I bought it immediately.
Now I buy a LOT of stuff on the internet but one thing I can’t seem to manage is understanding the size of things. It’s a genuine problem, in all honesty. I even have this thing I do where I will mimic the size of things by using cardboard cutouts I make to scale. Even that doesn’t seem to help me out a whole heck of a lot!
So when I finally got my hot little hands on my new spider wreath I was stoked. SO COOL! But then I popped it on my purple painted front door and, womp womp. It was way too small. Apparently a 23″ wreath looks dinky even on my average sized front door.
Knowing I needed to return it but not wanting it to get damaged I hung it in my laundry room. Every time I went to the garage to leave I’d see it hanging there and remember I still needed to return it. It stayed there for about a week and, gah, I just loved it so much! And so as soon as I returned that sucker I started buying supplies online to make my own. That didn’t quite go as planned but we’ll talk about that in a minute…
Supplies Needed to Make Your Own Spiderweb Halloween Wreath:
It’s a Christmas Wreath, but it Works…
I’m not going to lie… I made a gazillion different kinds of DIY spider eggs to festoon a plain grapevine wreath I had in the craft stash. I made homemade paper mache pulp which works, is cheap, but takes AGES to dry in humid climates. Then there was me crying and trying to mash together cotton balls with Elmer’s school glue and those looked super cool, came together super quickly, and dried fast. But I have a sensory thing and touching cotton like that literally makes me nauseous. It’s stupid weird. And I bought different floral berry or pussy willow stems online at Michael’s, Hobby Lobby, and JoAnn. And then I got to run around town returning all of them.
It was a moment of total surprise and elation when after returning my items at JoAnn that I literally stumbled onto the PERFECT wreath for this project. It was in the Christmas section but for some reason something told me just to go check. With matte berries instead of something slick and shiny the whole thing really is perfect. Boom! Fate WANTED me to have this awesome spiderweb wreath and you can’t convince me otherwise!
Or DIY Your Own Egg Covered Spiderweb Wreath
Buy a simple grapevine wreath and adorn with your own spider eggs. You can use white berry sprays that you’ll be able to find in Christmas sections right now. Or grab some cotton balls, divide in about half, and then glob them onto a stick with some school glue. Glue or wire the egg sprays into the wreath.
Where to Get Your Plastic Spiders
For my spiderweb wreath I wanted black spiders without any glitter on them. Imagine that… me not wanting glitter! AND I was having the darn hardest time finding non-glittery spiders. I was finally able to find the perfect spiders… My larger 2 sizes come from Michael’s and I waited until they were half off. You can buy a single large plastic spider here or buy a pair of the medium sized plastic spiders here.
The smaller pair have suction cups on the back that DO NOT WORK. So don’t get excited and plan on sticking these suckers to every flat surface you have because they’ll fall off within the hour. Trust me. Don’t be deterred though, as these spiders are still awesome and the cups are easily removed for this project.
And Last, but not Least, the Smallest Spiders
Now I actually had some little black spider rings that I was going to just chop the ring part off of. I think I got those from a dollar store. But I have been ordering big, fuzzy spiders for a totally different reason and the itty bitty spiders I used here were an added bonus of that purchase. Since they don’t have the ring back I went for it and they worked really well. You can find these little spiders, even without the backs, for a few dollars. Look in stores like Walmart, Target, and craft stores like Michael’s. Sometimes they even come with the bagged spiderwebs. Seasonal Halloween stores often carry them but they will cost a little bit more.
No Adhesives Necessary – Just Some Black Wire!
Now I think it’s pretty darn cool that you can just knock this wreath out easy and you please without busting out any adhesive. All you need is some black wire. And it doesn’t matter what kind of wire it is. You can get black floral wire, black jewelry wire, or black hardware store general purpose wire. You getting the theme here? As long as it is black and the color isn’t visible around your spider bods you’re set.
That being said, if you really want this sucker to stay together you can add a little bit of hot glue to anything you’re worried might not stay on for the long-haul. My itty bitty spiders do come off sometimes but they hang on well enough that I don’t mind putting them back up when the occasionally fall down.
Needle Nose Pliers – The Handiest of All Tools?
So in my tutorial you might notice that I used both wire snippers and needle-nose pliers. But the truth of the matter is that most needle nose pliers have a little cutting section all the way inside of the tool so you can totally knock this out without wire cutters.
How to Make a Spiderweb Wreath
Pull your cheap spiderweb decorations of of the packaging and gently unfold or stretch out. Pull to thin out as needed and drape around the berries.
Cover both the front and back of your wreath with thin wisps of spiderwebs, going a bit heavier on the front side around clumps of white berries.
Grab your medium or large sized plastic spiders, your black wire, and snippers or needle nose pliers.
Cut a length of 6-8 inches of wire and wrap around the front of the spider’s body to the back, in between legs where it will easily stay in place. Twist the wire to securely attach to the backside of the spider.
Push the wires through the web and wreath, or around the sides and pull until taut but not overly tight. You want the spider to rest on the surface of the eggs and webs, not deep inside of them.
Snip the excess wire and then curl into the wreath form to avoid sharp edges.
Stick your smallest spiders in the web in the center of the wreath and around. Just place the legs inside of the web and give it a little wiggle. The spider should hold on pretty well, but add a drop of hot glue if you’d like them to be more secure.
Give everything a good shimmy and reattach any small spiders that don’t want to stay hooked on.
