Make a SPOOKY skeleton hand

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This spooky skeleton hand is the perfect addition to your Halloween costume! Just slide your own hand into it and make those skeleton bones move!

You will need

Cardboard
Scissors
Ruler
Pencil
Marker
Eco-friendly straws
String
Strong tape

Method

Step one

Draw a giant hand on your piece of cardboard. Make sure the hand is much bigger than your own, with big broad square fingers! It's super important to extend your drawing to include a wrist and the top of an arm. Use scissors to carefully cut out your giant hand.

Step two

It's time to make those fingers bend by adding knuckle joints! With the help of a grown up, use one edge of your scissors to score along the cardboard where the finger joints should be. You should have three joints for each finger and two for the thumb. TOP TIP - only score the top layer of the cardboard, so it can bend easily. You can test out your joints by carefully bending each one.

Step three

Use a marker to draw all the bones of your hand! You can use the image below to work out where your bones should be.

Step four

Turn your skeleton hand over and colour in the sections between the bones. You could colour it black for a classic Halloween look, or choose any colour or decorations you like!

Step five

Now it's time to make your hand move by adding tendons. Tendons attach to our muscles to help them move our bones!

Trim a short piece of straw and use some really strong tape to stick the straw to the underside of your hand, between two of the joints on a finger. Repeat this until each finger has three pieces of straw taped to it, and the thumb has two pieces of straw taped to it. Use your finger to push down really hard on the edges of the tape - you don't want them to move!

Step six

Time to add some more tendons, but this time to the palm of your giant hand.

Use a slightly longer piece of straw (about twice the length of the finger tendons) and stick it on the palm of your giant hand, inbetween the little finger and the fourth finger.

Step seven

Take a piece of string and slide it through the straw on the palm of your giant hand and then up through each of the three smaller pieces of straw on the little finger. It's really important to leave some string hanging down so it reaches the base of your cardboard arm.

When you see the top of the string poking out of the final straw, use tape to stick the string to the finger tip of the little finger.

This is a good point to test your spooky hand! Give your string a gentle pull and see if the hand closes. If it doesn't, you might need to re-score the hand or re-attach your string to the tip of the fingers.

Step eight

Now you know how to make one finger bend, it's time to repeat the previous step for the other three fingers and of course, the thumb!

Step nine

The final step is to add some controls so you can use your hand and fingers to control the skeleton hand.

Take a rectangle of cardboard about 4cm wide. Bend the cardboard to make it flexible then wrap it around your hand just under your fingers and tape the edges together. Stick your loop of cardboard to the base of the arm of your skeleton hand. Your hand should be able to slide inside the tube.

Step ten

To make the finger controls, take a long strip of cardboard about 1cm wide. Bend the cardboard to make it flexible. Cut a section of the cardboard off and wrap it around one of your fingers. Use tape to stick the edges together to make a cardboard ring.

Step eleven

Slide your hand into the cardboard loop then place the cardboard ring onto your finger. Grab the piece of string you left hanging down closest to your finger and push it through the cardboard ring on your finger.

Pull the string gently until the whole finger bends and then tie the string in a knot around the cardboard ring. You should now be able to test the first finger!

Repeat the previous step for your other three cardboard fingers and thumb, so each of your fingers has it's own control.

Step twelve

Slide your hand into the cardboard loop and pop each of your fingers and thumb into their control ring. Give your fingers a wiggle to test each finger control is working correctly.