Watercolor Webs with Fingerprint Spiders

Halloween is right around the corner. Are you ready? Our treats have been purchased, we have visited our favorite pumpkin farm and Charlotte's costume is about 90% complete. I don't know whose more excited, her or me! A year ago holidays were fun because she could finally participate and recognize seasonal things, but this year she really gets it. She remembers everything we did last year and she can't stop talking about it as she sees the decorations come out and go on display in stores. Along with reading all of our favorite Halloween books, we have spent this week working on some spooky art projects to hang around the house in anticipation of the festivities next week. Let me show you what we've done so far.

Watercolor Webs with Fingerprint Spiders:
These are so ridiculously easy to make, but also incredibly cute. The web is made using a technique called watercolor resist. Here are the supplies you will need:

thick white cardstock
a white crayon
watercolor paint
stamp pads
fine tip Sharpie
scissors
scrapper's floss, string, or embroidery thread
mounting tape
glue ( I used Aleene's Tacky Glue)

Start by using your white crayon on the cardstock to draw a web. It's a little tricky to see so make sure you have good lighting. I drew my design and then traced over it a few times to make a good thick line. Next, give your little artist the paper and have them cover the entire page with the watercolor paint. This is my favorite part because I surprised C by not telling her I had drawn an image on the paper. She simply started painting and gasped as the image magically appeared. She wanted to do this over and over again for my mind is already reeling at the other possibilities we can use this easy technique to create. Once the painting is complete, I took a paper towel and lightly swiped it back and forth over the paper. This picked up any additional paint, kept the paper from warping and made the web more vibrant.

While you paper continues to dry, you are ready to work on your spiders. I was trying to come up with an easy way for a toddler to made a spider and quickly realized that C loves to do fingerprint art. All you do is grab a few stamp pads in various colors. Next, have your child dip their fingers in it and press it onto white cardstock leaving behind little colorful fingerprints.  I then took a fine tip Sharpie and drew little faces on the ones I wanted to use. I think they would be really cute with googly eyes too! Carefully cut your fingerprints out.

To make the legs, I dug in my old stamping stash and came up with some scrapper's floss. You definitely don't have to use this. String, embroidery thread or even thin strips of cardstock would work just as fine. I cut out my legs and attached them to a piece of mounting tape. I've always liked a little dimension to my projects :) I then added a string for a web and glued it all down with tacky glue to make sure it all stayed in place.

Told you it was an easy project! I think they our webs turned out super cute and we had a great time making them. The big spider is my thumbprint and the little spider is Charlotte's thumbprint. Here are some of the other artwork and spooktacular projects we have completed. Links are provided below for the tutorials I followed.

Halloween Footprint Art

Sparkly Glitter Slime

Play-doh Spiders

Felt Jack-O-Lantern 

Toddler art doesn't have to be too complicated. They are easily impressed, lol. Hope you spend the next week making some fun Halloween projects with your little trick-or-treater.