Make heart shaped chocolates into candy spiders for Valentine’s Day cards or Halloween treats. This fun craft is an easy idea you can create with your kids.
If your child loves creepy crawly critters, these easy heart shaped candy spiders are going to be a big hit. This kid’s craft is a great idea to use on Valentine’s Day cards or to hide as a Halloween prank.
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I love creating fun birthday gift tags, Halloween treats and Valentine cards for my boys to give to their friends at school. When our youngest son who we call “C2” here on the blog was in 3 year old preschool a few years ago, I made him funny Knock Knock Joke Valentine’s Day cards. They even included super silly googly eye glasses that we found at our local dollar store.
When he was in 4 year old preschool, he insisted that he wanted a little toy trinket on his Valentine’s. So we made cute airplane Valentine’s Day cards that said, “You make my heart soar!”
For kindergarten, he really wanted store-bought Spider-man Valentine’s Day cards. As much as I love to draw and make our own, I relented as long as we could make cute candy spiders to go with them.
Thankfully heart-shaped chocolates are readily available for Valentine’s Day. I just knew they’d make the perfect body for our candy spiders. It was important to me to make these as a kid’s craft so that C2 could be involved with creating his own cards for his classmates.
How to Make CANDY SPIDERS
Today, I’ll show you step-by-step how C2 and I made the candy spiders for his Valentine’s Day cards. While we used them for Valentine’s Day, you could just as easily make these for Halloween or some other fun occasion.
What you need:
With craft paper, scissors and tape, you can create candy spiders as a kid’s craft for Valentine’s Day or Halloween.
Craft Tools Needed:
Supplies Needed:
Instructions:
1. PREPARE THE LEGS FOR THE CANDY SPIDERS.
First, we’re going to start with the spider legs. Fold a piece of black construction paper in half lengthwise. Then have your child cut the paper down the center of the fold.
Next using a ruler and marker, divide your paper into three portions vertically. The center portion should be the width of your heart-shaped chocolate candies. The left and right segments should be equal in size but can be wider than the center section.
Then draw horizontal lines on the paper to mark off equally sized sections. These should be almost as tall as your chocolate candy pieces.
Now have your child cut along the horizontal lines. DO NOT cut the vertical lines. Those will be used as a reference point for cutting the individual spider legs.
Once you have all of the horizontal paper strips, the next step is to cut the spider legs. Have your child cut from the short edge of the paper to the reference line. Do this three times on each side to create four legs. You need a total of eight legs, four on each end of the horizontal paper strip.
TIP: To make the legs equal in size, first have your child make a cut from the center of the short edge to the line. This gives you two legs. Then have your child cut again from the center of each of those legs to the line to make the four legs you need.
2. FOLD THE SPIDER LEGS.
Now fold the legs twice, once along each of the marker lines. Then fold the legs in half in the opposite direction of the first fold.
The image below shows the folding progression in more detail.
- Fold down on the left and the right along the marker lines.
- Flip the paper over.
- Fold the legs down in the middle on each side to create the spider’s knee. (Do spiders even HAVE knees? You know what I mean here!)
3. MAKE THE SPIDER EYES.
Next, it’s time to make the spider’s eyes. Make a vertical fold in your white paper about a half an inch from the edge. Using scissors cut small shapes for the eyes along the fold. We made our hearts for Valentine’s Day, but you could just make ovals or a figure eight type shape.
If your child has good fine motor skills, you can have him or her do the cutting for the eyes. However, for the sake of time, I cut our heart shapes while C2 was busy folding all the legs.
Once all the eyes are cut, have your child use a black marker to make eight dots on each one for the spider’s eyeballs.
4. ATTACH THE EYES TO THE CHOCOLATE HEARTS.
When the eyes are finished, use transparent tape to attach a set of eyes to each chocolate candy. We put ours at the very top of the heart.
5. ASSEMBLE THE CANDY SPIDERS.
Now you’re ready to put it all together to make your candy spiders. Place a small loop of transparent tape in the center of the legs. Put a chocolate candy heart on top of the tape and press firmly to hold the candy in place.
6. MAKE A WHOLE ARMY OF CANDY SPIDERS.
Repeat the previous steps over and over again until you’ve got all the candy spiders you need for Valentine’s Day cards or Halloween treats.
C2 was really pleased with how his whole army of candy spiders turned out. He was playfully marching them around our dining room table. I think he also threatened to hide one on my chair to scare me later.
7. ATTACH THE CANDY SPIDERS TO VALENTINE’S DAY CARDS.
If you’re using the candy spiders for Valentine’s Day like we did, the very last step is to attach them to your cards. We just used tape to do that. The “to/from” part on our Spider-man Valentine’s Day cards was a circle shape. This made a perfect spot to affix our candy spiders — just make sure your child signs the cards before you attach the spiders.
Does your child have a particular type of Valentine’s Day cards that s/he likes to give to friends? If you’ve seen any really creative ones, please comment below and share. We’re always looking for new ideas.
While you’re here, be sure to check out the free printable dinosaur treat tags I made for C2’s birthday treats a few years ago. They would totally work as Valentine’s Day cards – you could even attach a toy dinosaur.
If you enjoyed these candy spiders, please share them with your friends or pin it for later:
What’s next?
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