As with all these designs, try to start with relatively clean, crisp bills. It will go much easier. All folds should be sharply creased. It helps to go over the fold with a fingernail on a flat, hard surface.
The spider requires five bills: four for the legs, and one to wrap the body.
Start by rolling up four of the bills into tight tubes (as explained below), then fold each one in half end-to-end.
Then fold the remaining bill exactly in half lengthwise three times.
Now you have the pieces.
Totally Tubular
Rolling up the bill into a tube like this is interesting enough on its own, but the tubes are also nice 'building' material for other designs.
Start at one corner rolling as tightly as you can manage, at about the angle shown. Continue rolling the entire bill, trying to maintain the tightest possible roll while maintaining the same angle.
Once you've finished rolling the entire bill, as soon as you let go, the bill 'relaxes' and unrolls a bit. The key to getting the tight roll shown in the image below is to start rolling back the other way from the outside corner. Don't unroll the first roll any more than necessary.
After rolling twice, the bill will remain in the tube shown above without tape or glue (or spit or ...) more or less indefinitely. (Old 'soggy' notes will not hold the roll.)
Take each of the four leg tubes and drape them over the flat folded bill near the end. As shown, leave a little bit hanging out the end, as seen to the left in the picture.
This is a close-up of the four legs draped over the flat folded bill. While holding the leg ends tightly together, tightly wrap the flat bill around the whole thing one and a half times.
This picture shows the flat bill wrapping over and trapping the end poking out from the left on the picture above. Make sure that this wrap is very tight, that the legs are squeezed tightly together, or you won't be able to make the body stay together .
This is a pretty good, tight wrap. If it doesn't look like this, don't continue. Work on it until it is solidly tight.
Making sure to hold the wrap tightly closed, turn the whole thing over in your hands. While squeezing the side tightly together, kink each of the legs outward, four on each side.
(Try forcing the bend to occur over your thumbnail, to prevent pulling the wrapped bill out of shape, or loosening the wrap.)
Fold a ninety degree turn into the flap over the end, and then fold the remainder down between the split legs. (Just look at the picture.)
After going between the legs (top of this picture), wrap the flap around the other end and around under.
Okay, this is a rotten picture, but... Take the remainder of the tab (bottom of previous picture, middle-to-right this picture), and tuck it between the legs and the outer wrap on the side that the outer wrap is only one deep.
(Usually use the end of a key to help force this bit down into the body. This has to be tight, or the whole thing will fall apart. If the end is too short, or it won't stay shoved down in there, you need to go back and tighten up the whole body wrap.)
If all has gone well up to now, the body will hold itself together based on the previous step. For each of the eight legs, bend back toward the body.
That's about it. Here's the finished product:
There are two keys to having it look nice and stay together:
1 Wrap the tubes for the legs tight
2 Wrap and tuck the "body" bill tight
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