Home Décor for the Spider Lovers

Most of us like to decorate our homes with items like family pictures, colorful rugs, beautiful paintings or photographs, and other items you can find at Pier 1 Imports. There are a plethora of vendors that sell these normal home décor items, but what if you want something a little more original…say a stuffed spider mounted in a frame? Stranger items like these can be much harder to track down, but lovers of tarantulas are in luck. One woman in Washington decided to start her own home décor business in 2014, taking stuffed spiders and turning these creepy critters into striking wall ornaments that people are sure to notice.

Carly Haney began creating and selling her gothic Victorian and baroque inspired spider home décor pieces in 2014, first at booths at local fairs. Her success eventually lead to her being able to sell her one of a kind pieces to the rest of the world online on websites such as Etsy. The specimens she uses come already prepared for mounting, meaning they’ve already been gutted and stuffed. Haney has to first gradually rehydrate the spider corpse by keeping wrapped in a wet paper towel until it has returned to a more natural looking state. She can then repose the spider into whatever position suits the piece she is working on.

Haney is particularly fond of using the spider species Nephila, a giant orb-weaving genus of spiders, which are quite similar to the hairy tarantulas. After carefully posing the spider and pinning it to a Styrofoam base, Haney chooses a frame that complements that specific specimen, taking traits such as shape, size, and coloring into account. She then mounts the spider in the frame, accenting it with vintage doilies and craft paper to accentuate the gothic feel of her pieces. What really sets Haney’s pieces apart from other taxidermy displays featuring small animals is her practice of refraining from setting her critters behind glass or in shadow boxes, leaving them exposed to the air. This really allows people to get up close and personal with the spiders, and see the critters from all angles.

Would you or anyone you know be brave enough to place a mounted spider on your wall as home decoration?