Isn’t this spider web craft adorable? Surely it must be super-simple, right?

Well, yes, IF you have the directions. Which I did not. So, as with everything else in my life that ends up being harder than I’d ever imagined (such as making a ghost costume), I had to hack my way through it.

So yes, you too (and your kids!) can make this cute spider web craft, Super Mom Hacks style. Even if you are not innately crafty. With these hacks, I promise you it’s easy-peasy. Without – well, good luck.

Why this spider web craft needed hacking

First off, I have no idea where this lovely craft idea originally come from online, or whose it was. It is a clever activity, and just adorable once it’s finished. And I am sure my modifications totally bastardized the original creator’s intentions into something far less beautiful.

But here’s the thing: if I’m actually going to do  a craft with my kids, it has to be DOABLE. As in, easily doable. WIthout requiring innate crafting geniuses to pull it off.

This adorable spider web craft, as it originally came to me – not so much.

How you might find yourself here, and what to do about it:

Last fall we flew to visit my brother Evan, his wife Alicia, and their seven-month-old baby Abby. It was our first time meeting our new niece/cousin, and my girls were super-excited. Not to mention super-high-energy (as one would expect of elementary-school kids).

When you’re in a house with a compact floor plan and a baby who still naps at least 2x/day, this is a recipe for disaster.

Fortunately, my SIL Alicia is a domestic goddess and Crafty Mama Extraordinaire. Her house looks like a spread from Better Homes & Gardens, always impeccably decorated for the holiday of the month. And whereas I’m the eldest and a first-time auntie, Alicia is the youngest in her family. She already had a half-dozen nieces and nephews when she married Evan.

So every day while Abby napped, Alicia pulled out a different project to amuse my kiddos, then went to log a few hours of telecommuting time. One day, she handed us a pile of tongue depressors, a ball of twine, and a picture of this adorable spider web craft, and said to me, “Here, I bet you can figure out how to make these with the girls.”

No instructions. Just the picture, which she’d printed off Pinterest or something.

Yeah, right! (Not so much.)

So I gave it a go. This is what I ended up with. The string would NOT stay nicely spaced out on the tongue depressors, which were clearly too wide for the intended purpose. All it did is bunch up in the middle, and look like a knotted mess. Nothing I tried would keep it from sliding down.

Nothing like feeling like a complete crafting/domestic failure, while your SIL the crafting queen could have probably pulled this off in her sleep. (Raise your hand if you can relate.)

Fortunately, Alicia had also left us a big box of general crafting supplies before retreating to her home office. In the box I found some scissors and some double-sided tape.

So I got to work hacking this craft to make it doable. First off, the tongue depressors were just too wide; we really needed narrower wood sticks, i.e. popsicle sticks. So I carefully cut several tongue depressors in half. Voilà: narrower sticks!

Next, after I’d taped the sticks together in the middle, I stuck a thin strip of double-sided tape to the back of each one. I briefly considered glue instead, but decided that would be too messy; I needed something to stick instantly, not something that would need to wait to dry.

Once I had those two things figured out, this crafting project was indeed as easy-peasy as it should have been from the start. Even the girls could pull it off!

So learn from my mistakes, get the right tools, and give this craft a try with your little creative geniuses this weekend:

Cute Spider Web Craft, Made Simple

What you need:

• A bag of popsicle sticks (i.e., the skinnier wooden sticks – NOT the wider tongue depressors!)
• A ball of lightweight white twine
• A roll of clear double-sided tape

Step-by-step:

1. Put two small pieces of double-stick tape in the center of a popsicle stick, one on each side. Center one popsicle stick UNDER the taped stick at an angle, and center another stick OVER the taped stick at an opposite angle, to form an asterisk/six-pointed star shape. Press the sticks firmly together in the center. Then layer an extra piece of tape over the places where the sticks underneath intersect with the top stick.
2. Wrap twine securely around the center of the star, and tie the loose end to secure. Leave the tail attached to your ball intact for now.
3. Lay thin strips of double-stick tape along each of the six spokes of the star, on the side that you want to be the “back side” of the craft. If the tape is wider than the sticks, trim off excess. Turn the star over (so the tape is facing away from you) and hold at the center between your fingers.
4. Working your way out from the center in a clockwise direction, wrap the string over the top of each stick, around the back, and then across the top again. As you work your way around, make sure that each layer of string sticks to the backside of each stick, and that each subsequent round is a little further from the center than the round before.
5. When you’re almost at the ends of the sticks, and before you get to the end of your double-stick tape strips, cut the string, leaving a tail of 12″-24″ from the edge of the spiderweb. Tie the string to the stick, around the previous layer of string on that stick. Use the tail to hang your web.
6. If you like, you can attach a toy plastic spider onto the web.

There! That wasn’t so bad, was it?

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