Halloween Spider Handprint Craft

If you know me, you know that I am a holiday freak.  Any holiday.  I'm all about celebration & themes.  Right now, our house is being painted.  Every room is done except for our main living space, naturally. The problem with this is that my holiday freak flag can't fly.  I can't decorate my fireplace mantle yet or string yards of Halloween banners all over each room.  Today though, I could no longer keep my freak flag lowered.  I raised that flag & puked Halloween all over any space I could.  We now have black & white chain link garland hanging & dollar store banners & window clings all over this place.  And my flag is flying proudly as if to say, "BOO YAH!"

If you know me, you also know that I am a craft queen.  I have an endless supply of construction paper,  craft paint, stickers, glue, Mod Podge, crayons & any other supply you can name.  I promise you I have it.  Now that I have kids, my crafting has taken on a whole new meaning.  I love coming up with things for Collin to create & display for the holidays.  It also gives him a sense of pride when he sees his creations hanging on our walls or the fridge.  I'm a sucker for handprint art because it's also a fun keepsake.  Collin will have so many of these when he is an adult.  Oy!

Anyway, thought I'd share with you how I did our craft with TWO two year olds & almost NO mess.  Holler at yo' craft Mama!!!

You'll need black & white craft paint or acrylic paint. I happen to have acrylic paint on hand.  Perfectly safe & non-toxic, so don't worry.  Two paint brushes, one big enough to paint the kids' hands & the other small enough to paint in the eyes on the spider.  (I only had three googly eyes, so we painted our eyes in.)  Baby wipes to clean their hands off right away.  Construction paper to put the handprints on.  Lastly, a Sharpie so you can write the names, ages, year, etc for the kids.  Also? Halloween candy. Necessary in this house.

Since I was solo, I coudln't snap any, "during," photos, but I just painted the boys' hand (excluding the thumb so I could get four, "legs") & then helped them place it on the paper.  I painted the same hand again & helped them place it again to form the spider shape.  Then I immediately wiped their hands clean with a baby wipe.  There was no residue or anything from the paint.  It wipes completely clean, I promise. 

Dude, it's hard to get these two year old to hold still.  Hard.  But you can still see how proud they are of their spiders.  Plus, they were allowed to get dirty without complaints from Mama, so it was win-win for them.

While their spiders were drying, I whipped out some crayons & coloring books to keep them entertained.  Collin didn't really care & kept asking for more, "chwoc-it."  Oops.

After the spiders were dry, I pulled some Halloween stickers from my stash & let them embellish their art.  Then I painted in the eyes & smiles since it was a little too hard for them .

Lastly, you display the crap out of the adorable little spider crafts!!!  Collin has noticed them up there at least three times today & says to me, "Hey! Dat's my 'pider! And dat's Ay-eens 'pider!!!"  And then I die.