By folding the bottom of the tube in the same way, but perpendicular to the top of the tube you get quite a nice bat body shape for hanging up.
The kids got nice and filthy with black paint, painting up the bat bodies...
I think the bat wings were inspired by a card that was made on Makes and Takes a while back. They used some tissue paper to thread through a card to make bat wings, but we didn't have any black tissue paper, so we used black constructions paper. Folded it in half to cut the bottom of the wings into shape...
Then concertina folded them up.
I cut a couple of horizontal slits on either side of the bat bodies to thread the folded up wings through, and then unfolded them and curved forward the wings to make them nice and full looking. The tip of the top of each wing was folded back to give it a bit of a more batty shape.
Red sticker eyes were stuck on and then they got hung up in our kitchen with the rest of the artwork for a few days. 
Batgirl loves them.
Until Halloween, when we took them out and hung them on the porch to frighten trick or treaters. They made the Happy Halloween sign themselves too and are very proud of it indeed!
Because the bodies were made out of toilet roll tube, the ever resourceful hubster was able to put together a little circuit involving flashing LEDs and a battery pack to stuff inside. Voila! Spooky flashy red bat eyes! 
If you fancy trying that part yourself then you can check it out on his blog Fangletronics.
I hope you all had a lovely halloween! I'm loving American halloweens. It's such a big holiday for the kids. Sorry to be posting some of our halloween crafts after the holiday, but we're always last minute with such things, and I know that if I don't put these things on the blog now, then I will have lost them by this time next year.
14 comments:
Love the bats! I'll have to try to remember that idea next year!
What brilliant bats! Worth waiting for ;-)
I just bopped over to your hubby's blog because I would love to add some LED eyes to the robot bedside table I just redid for my son's room. (http://madincrafts.blogspot.com/2009/10/s-bot-2007-craft-odyssey.html)
But I got over there, started to read, and my head exploded. Too much Science early in the day. :P
Oh, I'll be doing that fold in the tube to make handprint bats next year. Here are our handprint bats from this year. http://mamabeefromthehive.blogspot.com/2009/10/few-halloween-crafts.html
I love this! I'll need to keep it in mind for next year. They look so cute hanging around!
Jen
Creative and Curious Kids!
http://raisingcreativeandcuriouskids.blogspot.com
Love the hand print bats Beth! There are so many cool things to do with hand prints!
and JHill, some of the electronics and programming that goes on in this house makes my head assplode too! I'm ok with basic electronics, and in my distant past, made a radio telescope that could track the sun and detect sun spots, but programming micro controllers is out of my league. It is very handy and lots of childish fun to have someone in the house that can do that stuff!
Wow wee really cool!
Adorable bats! We are doing a bat theme on my blog next week- may I please link to you if we do these? Thanks!
-Kara
http://littlelearnerslounge.blogspot.com/
Sure Kara, that would be great. If you send me a link to your bats then I'll put it in one of my reader's round up posts :)
WOW I will be making these next week with the kiddies..thanks so much!
We made the bats this week they were so fun!
Here is our post. Thanks!
-Vanessa
http://adventurekerrs.blogspot.com/2010/10/bats.html
This is super cute-can't wait to make a ton of these for the porch!
I've been looking up decorations for this upcoming Halloween for a while. So glad I bookmarked this page! I had the fam save up the rolls and just made about 50 bats. So awesome!
Very cute! This is awesome and perfect for the kids! I really loved the materials you put to complete features of the bat. We did a toilet paper roll snake project out of the same materials you used. You should check it out! :)
EarlyLearning.Momtusted.com: Toilet Paper Roll Snake Project
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