Giant Spider Halloween Prop

Step 2 Wire armature

First thing you need to do is plan your spider.  It is highly beneficial to do some research ahead of time and look up different sorts of spiders.  Do you want an orb weaver type spider with a bulbous abdomen, or something more sleek, like a wolf spider?  Take note of the body shape and where the legs are attached.  That will be very important in later steps and the groundwork for that happens with the wire armature.

Once you decide how your spider should look, start planning the size and how the armature should be shaped.  You are more or less creating a skeleton for your spider and that skeleton will allow your spider to be posed.  Obviously, you need to have your eight legs, but keep in mind that spiders have fangs too.  If you want fangs that can be posed from a neutral position to attack mode, you'll need to plan for that at this stage so the prop will be solid when it is complete. 

The drawing attached to this step shows basically how I set my spider's armature up. 

Some things to note are that the legs are not eight pieces of wire, but four - each crosses over the wire for the body's armature and is taped in place so the legs won't end up falling off.  The fangs are also one piece of wire bent in the middle to attach to the main body armature.  Make sure you leave enough space for the legs around the wire.  You don't want the legs to be overcrowded when you start building up the shape!

If your copper wire feels too flimsy, you can double it up and wrap two pieces together to make it stronger.