Hey guys!! I've been working here and there on some of my Halloween props and getting small stuff back up that I had last year (garland under the bar counter, 'flight of the bats' from the ceiling, webbing on the pictures in the living room, etc) but I went ahead and got more of my spider Egg Sacks made last night that I originally made 2 of about 3 years ago and wanted to make a tutorial for you so you can have some of your very own too!!
Doesn't this look just the creepiest!?
First, you'll need to get your supplies:
- Spray Adhesive
- Balloons (I use black, but you just want to use something that won't be noticeable, so white, black maybe green or gray...)
- Plastic spiders
- Plastic/paper plate or painter's tray for paint
- Sponge
- White fabric (I used a $3 twin sheet from Wal-Mart)
- Acrylic paint in gray, green and brown
- Webbing
- Surface you don't mind getting adhesive and paint on (I use a piece of another sheet I used for other props before; as you can tell, it's used a lot!)
For my egg sacks, I mixed gray, green and brown paint together in about equal portions to get this olivey, sickly type of green:
I blew up about 6 balloons and tied them off. The fabric I cut in varying sizes of thick/thin square-like and longer rectangles. Think of these like papier mache strips. Once you've got your fabric pieces cut, grab a balloon and your spray adhesive. Now, I actually popped a balloon spraying too much and/or that particular balloon was a little weak. I'm not sure which, so just be careful in spraying too much.
Spray adhesive, if you've never worked with it, is very very sticky. It also works better when you spray less than if you spray more. You can either spray the pieces of fabric or the balloon directly and then apply the fabric strip to the sticky spots on the balloons. This is the easy part as you don't have to be clean or organized at all!! In fact, you WANT to put the pieces as disorganized and wrinkly as possible!
The more wrinkles you can get on these pieces once they're laid down, the better. You also want to get about full coverage, but it's ok if little spots show through:
Don't worry about covering where the knot of the balloon is, you'll usually not see this part as you'd use the knot to tie string on and tie this guy up to hang somewhere in the corner.
Once you've got all the fabric stuck on the balloon and the adhesive has been able to dry for a bit, go ahead and grab your sponge. Here's where you get to see where having all those wrinkles come into play!! When you sponge on the paint, you don't want to have full coverage, you want to be able to see some white showing through, but it's up to you on how much white vs green you have. Notice when you sponge on the folds and wrinkles of the fabric, you get the appearance of veins!
This is about what you should see once you've got the whole thing painted. See those awesome creepy veins?!
Next, grab some webbing, but only a little piece. Webbing most of the time comes in these big, fat, yarn-like strands. I cut off about a 4"-6" piece for these balloons. Stretch it out a little beforehand so it's a little easier to spread. Grab your adhesive spray and lightly coat a good size portion of the visible balloon surface you can see. Spraying this much makes it faster on sticking down the webbing so you're not re-spraying in between each little area where you're laying it down.
When you're done with the webbing, just go ahead and stick a few plastic spiders in among the webbing and you're done!
Here's one I made last time, 3 years ago.
You might be thinking to yourself, "Self, how on Earth did she keep these old egg sacks inflated for 3 years?! Balloons don't last that long!! What the heck?!"
Well Self, I'll tell you! The other awesome thing about these besides being easy and cheap to make and giving you an easy, creepy prop, is that once you're done with them for the year, all you need do is take out the balloon (pop it) and flatten out the fabric!
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| Flattened Egg Sacks |
When next year comes around, the fabric will have stayed together well enough that all you need to do is stick a new balloon in there...
Inflate and voila! All you need do is maybe spot-check a few places where the corners of the fabric may have come up over time, but you can totally re-use these!! The only thing to watch out for is over inflating the balloon to bigger than it was the previous year as if you do, you will make all the fabric pieces come apart!
With my two from before, and one of my new ones, I just tied fishing line around the knots of the balloons and put them in the ceiling with a push pin!
What do you guys think?? Is this something you will be adding to your list for this Halloween or maybe next? Let me know how this method worked out for you and what your egg sacks look like!! I'd love to see them!!
Craft ya laters!!
