#65: Nancy Drew Spider

Be An Interplanetary Spy (Martinez, 1984)

I never read Nancy Drew growing up. I read one Trixie Beldon, a bunch of Choose Your Own Adventures (my absolute fave is Be An Interplanetary Spy #6: The Star Crystal, which I purchased at a school book fair in 4th or 6th grade with my friend Bonnie, who was nuts over Harriet the Spy), an Agatha Christie, and a whole lot of V.C. Andrews (which is kinda like mystery, if you think about it). But there's something so charming and invigorating about Nancy, so I had to make this spider and then take a picture of it under the "hood" of my R.C. Allen typewriter that I got for my 16th birthday from my mom.

What kid doesn't love to spy or solve mysteries? When I was a kid, my cousin Erin, my brother, and I would spy on relatives at family gatherings with trusty little spiral notepads and write down conversations word for word, then report back to headquarters. This was before mini-recorders (which is also way before all of this digital hoo-haw, if you're wondering what I'm talking about). Once upon a time, a good sleuth had to use her own God-given senses to solve a mystery. Listen. Look. Smell. Absorb. Fit together pieces of a puzzle. Lock people in a jail cell sitting outside of your uncle's bike shop until they fessed. That last part will only make sense to Erin and Matt, but maybe you can imagine.

Inside Greta's sleuth kit

My 9-year-old daughter Greta fancies herself a sleuth. She particularly hunts for ghosts, but she has a lot of tools for her trade including a Nancy Drew sleuth kit that I made for her for her birthday with various pouches for storing a magnifying glass, Miss A Kit (like a Swiss Army knife but with girlie stuff), invisible ink, clue journal, spy pen, and more. Young detectives must be encouraged so that they can some day save the world!

A quick note about the making of this spider: I used Shrinky Dink plastic again so that I could draw the silhouette of Nancy and shrink it down to spider size. I used copper tape for the edges of the melted plastic, then antiqued the whole thing with gold paint and light green patina. I made the legs out of paper-wrapped beads from an old fallen-apart dictionary that belonged to my great grandfather. I think the whole spider has the perfect aged look. Some things only get better with time...like Nancy Drew.

Materials: Shrinky Dink plastic, copper tape, paint and patina, pearl bead, dictionary paper-wrapped beads, blue E beads, gold seed beads, gold wire