Fingerprint Spiders

 

Today, E woke up and immediately asked to do an activity. This super quick and simple craft was the first one we did: Fingerprint spiders sitting on a white spider web. Check out the resist technique we used to make it!

 

(E was 3 years and 11 months old.)

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To make fingerprint spiders, you’ll need:

• Liquid watercolors or other types of liquid paint in different colors. {You can easily use tempera paint or mix water into your watercolor cakes.}
• Paper or poster board {we used watercolor paper}.
• Markers in different colors {we used this awesome set of permanent BIC markers that I just bought – I love the colors!}.
• Spiderweb foam shape (optional).
• Paint roller (optional).
• Bowls and cups for the paint. Use a wide shallow container like a plastic plate if you use a paint roller.

 

There are many ways of making a spider web for your fingerprint spiders to play on. You could simply draw one, print out a drawing from the Internet, use a sticker, etc. They don’t even really need a web! A single strand might be all they need to hang out, or they may just be running across the paper.

For this activity, I decided to try a resist idea I had: I lightly taped a foam spiderweb shape to a piece of watercolor paper, then E used a paint roller with liquid watercolors to paint parts of the paper and create a spiderweb in negative space once the foam shape was removed. {Note that we used black liquid watercolors that produced this dark green color – pretty in its own way but not what I was shooting for.}

 

 

Due to the thickness of the foam, it was a bit hard to get paint into all the little gaps with the paint roller. I had to help E a little, and it wasn’t really easy for me, either.

Still, we got the effect we wanted once we took off the foam spiderweb.

 

 

Now it was time to pick out some colors for the spiders, and E picked violet, orange, red and turquoise.

She stuck her finger into each liquid watercolor once, then made as many fingerprints as she could before the paint on her finger ran out.

 

 

 

Once the spiders had all dried, I added eight legs and two eyes to each of the bigger fingerprints. I chose to match the colors of the bodies, legs and eyes but you could simply use black for the legs and eyes.

And just like that, we had a nice Halloween decoration that isn’t scary at all, I actually think it’s pretty cute 🙂

 

 

Simple crafts are the best!

 

Does your child like spiders? What’s your favorite spider craft? Leave a comment and tell me about it!

 

 

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