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Let me preface this by saying that I am not a fan of spiders. I have a contract with the ones in my house - I don't want to see you. If I do, I'll have to kill you. But feel free to eat the bugs as much as you see necessary.

A good friend of mine likes to repurpose jewelry like I do (Shoutout to Rebecca - Check out her YouTube channel)

After watching her video, I knew I needed to make some. I started taking apart the jewelry I had been collecting in my "to be sorted" pile and got the wire I had in my stash and I started building spiders.

Note on wire: the lower the number, the thicker the wire. 20 gauge is thicker than 22 gauge.

Also, wire is not created equally. Aluminum is lightweight but doesn't handle heavy loads as well. Copper is generally what I use for these because it bends easy enough to create the spider but is strong enough to hang.

A few tips for building spiders:

First of all, there are a ton of tutorials online. Rebecca has two different tutorials on her YouTube Channel. But here are a few things I've learned that you may miss.

• 20 or 22 gauge wire is definitely the way to go if you are using glass or stone. You could probably get away with 24ga if you use strictly acrylic but I would use the thicker wire for the body beads.

• Keep the chain from the broken jewelry you are taking apart! The majority of mine are chained up on necklace chain. And honestly, the chain that comes from jewelry is better quality than any of the chain I've bought specifically for beading and jewelry making.

  

• For the legs - use the smallest beads in your pile closest to the body. All of my leg beads near the body are seed beads or bugle beads (bugle beads are skinny tubes)

• SORT THE BEADS FOR THE PROJECT FIRST! I can't tell you how many hours I spent looking for beads at the last minute. Finding 8 of one kind of bead is difficult when most of your beads are from broken jewelry. Not to mention, using up 8 at a time goes through beads pretty quick! Just plan in advance. Get your leg beads planned first.

• I wasn't super strict on wire lengths. I pretty much winged it on most of the spiders. However, the last few Earth spiders I made all have the same length legs. That made things much easier when it came to planning each build. I knew the leg length so I had a better idea of how many beads I could use.

• If you find your wire is a little floppy where the legs connect to the body, add some sort of binding agent. I've heard people use UV resin. I have not tried that. I have used Aleene's Tacky Glue (Amazon affiliate link). Aleene's is my go-to for just about everything. And it holds the body together pretty well. I've also used Gem Tac (Amazon affiliate link) which is a little more expensive. It is a little thinner than Aleene's and works just as well.

Meet & Greet

I decided to take my spiders one step further and create little biographies and personalities for each. Be sure to check out my Suncatcher, Windchime collection to meet and learn about each one! You might find one that you relate to...shared birthdays, similar hobbies (I'm sure your hobbies include creating large webs along the tops of the grass)

And keep in mind, I always have free shipping on orders over $50. There are Halloween and Christmas themed spiders, so you can plan for the holidays!

Let me know what you think and color combos you think would be cool as a spider!

~M