These flying bats are definitely NOT the spooky kind! Although, if you decided to attach them to monofilament line and hang them from the ceiling, a chandelier or a ceiling fan….they could get a little spooky! There are so many uses for these simple foam bats. All you need is a little imagination!  

Materials List:

• Black craft foam
• Paper for templates
• Mechanical pencil
• Scissors
• Silver craft wire
• Glass container
• Craft stones
• Tape

Tip:

If you are a real crafter, you have probably already done this. Go out shopping, check your children’s books, look through craft stores to find shapes that please you. My bat template was a bat shaped sponge stamp that I found at my local Michael’s. I bought one to create a bat template that I can enlarge or shrink depending on what project I am doing. The other nice thing about this is that every bat in my Halloween décor is this very bat, so everything looks like it really is meant to go together.

Instructions:

1) Start by filling your container with the craft pebbles. These are meant to hold the wired bats in place. You can use solid colored fish tank stones, try layering orange and black, the sky’s the limit! 

2) Trace around your bat templates onto the foam with a mechanical pencil. I find that the sharp point of a mechanical pencil works best on the foam.

Notice in the finished photo that I used three different size bat templates. I changed the sizes using a copy machine. 

3) Use your sharp craft scissors to cut the bats out of the foam.

4) Find objects around the house to bend the craft wire around. This is to simulate the bats flight path. I used markers for tight spins and glasses for wide turns! 

5) I simply taped the bats to the tops of the wires and made sure the front was always facing toward the room. You could make double the number of bats and glue the wire sandwiched in between two layers of bat. 

The reason I used tape is for storage purposes. I can easily take the arrangement apart and put the bats, pebbles and wire in a large zip lock baggy and I store the parts until next year. I reuse the container for other projects or arrangements, so it stays in my cupboard!

All in all, this project is a real winner because it is very inexpensive to create, it doesn’t take a lot of time, and it stores away in a small amount of space. I love it and so will you!

Shari