Arts ‘n’ Crafts

I hate spiders. They creep me the fuck out. Unfortunately I’m working on a super-secret project which entailed making little spiders out of wire. It took me a while to figure out how to make these little bastards, so there are quite a few hanging around the flat.

Here’s one waiting to jump on my head.

Every so often I will encounter one of these – glimpse it from the corner of my eye, or knock one off the arm of the sofa onto my leg or something. And every single time my heart does somersaults, sending its pulse off for a short weekend break by the sea until I finally realise it’s only one of my creations.

So, I have decided to share the terror and document the process of making these creepy wire spiders, so you too will be able to freak yourselves out and torment arachnophobic aquaintances.

Assemble your tools.

You will need:

• Wire. I used 0.6mm chrome-effect wire, but even a couple of paperclips will do.
• A pair of pliers for crushing twisted masses of wire.
• A tool for cutting the wire
• A tool for bending the wire. (I found a couple of cheap tools in the jewellery-making section of a hobby store.)
• A hot beverage.

This is a picture I took myself.

Cut four equal-lengths of wire.

Do whatever you find necessary to get four bits of wire.

Bend two wire segments into loops.

Make sure the loop is in the middle.

Entwine the last two wire segments with the first two.

• First insert the last two segments through the loops created in the first two.
• Then make loops in the new segments, around the old. Make sure the loops on the new segment are on the same side as the old loops, i.e. loops (spider body) one side up, wire ends (spider legs) on the other side.

Poke the wires through the loops.

Loop the new wires around the old.

 
Consolidate your looping.

• This is done by using your big-ass pliers to crimp and crush the loops as tight as possible. You may need to do this from all angles to make the body as small as possible.

Crush him!

 
Make leg joints.

• These should be done two legs at a time to ensure symmetricity.
• Legs need two joints.
• I used ratios of about 4:3 for the first two leg segments, i.e. the second joint should be slightly closer to the first than the first to the spider’s body.
• Legs at front and rear of the spider should be of equal length, as should the legs at the sides – the outermost legs. The side legs should be a little shorter than the front and rear legs, so size these leg sections a little more closely.
• Don’t worry about cropping the legs to their final sizes yet.

Bend the leg joints in pairs.

Can you guess what it is yet?

Spread the legs.

• Separate pairs of legs. The widest gaps should be between the outermost front and rear legs.

A spider spreading its legs is different to when people do it.

 
Cut the legs to length.

• Cut the ends off the legs. Make the final leg segment slightly longer than the others.

Like that.

 
 Make foot bends to the legs.

• Bend the ends of the legs upwards a little – these are the feet segments.

Bend the very ends of the wires.

Make the spider flat.

• Press the spider down on a hard surface to make sure the feet are level. The uppermost parts of the legs should be higher than the body.

There it is!

Finishing touches.

• Use your bending tool to crimp the wire slightly above and below each joint to accentuate the fact that they are joints, not just bends.
• Make any final adjustments to the leg angles – they can be raised, lowered, tilted – however you like them.

Make it look sexy.

 
Place your spider somewhere visible.

• AAAAAAAAAAAGH!

I think it wants to change the channel.

So there you go. Now you can make wire spiders too.

My first tutorial! Yay!