Madeline Au took a piece of red card and asked her to ask her dad if he would cut out the spider he had sketched before indicating where it would go on her Halloween mask.
With the kind of endless patience that only parents understand, Gough Au folded the card in two around the stencil and asked if his daughter would like two spiders instead of just one.
"Yes," she said and returned to her mask.
Madeline was clearly the creative director of this careful operation. Mr Au was there to help execute his five-year-old's vision.
"It's going to have ears," she said of the mask at one point, to which Mr Au smiled in his patient way. Then: "We used to live in Geelong, but now we live in Newcastle."
Mr Au is a Newcastle local who worked in Victoria for a while before returning to the Hunter. The New Lambton father and daughter came to the Wallsend Library at the weekend to create a costume for the return of the Wallsend Frights community event celebrating Halloween next week.
The workshop was hosted by Newcastle theatre company Curious Legends, known for its elaborate puppetry, often sourced from upcycled and reused materials.
"The idea is to just let the kids run wild," performance artist Harley Duguid said, moments after helping a young artist wearing fox ears cut out some felt to cover a quartet of foam animal feet.
Ms Duguid joined Curious Legends soon after leaving school, drawn by the spectacle of the puppetry and creativity.
"I love that I'm not the focus. It's the huge glowing thing up on top of us, and seeing the kids' faces when they see it is great," she said, beaming. "I love interacting with the kids - you know, they may never see me again, but I hope these ideas stay with them."
The theatre company focuses on recycled and reused household materials to encourage children to adopt a conservationist mindset in their art. During Saturday's workshop, cardboard boxes and packing foam were turned into tentacles and paws, brought to second life.
"We like the kids to leave the workshop and think that maybe they won't throw out that milk carton because it could be a robot arm," Ms Duguid said. "There's so much creativity in the world, and to get them in that mindset is great."
Wallsend Frights the free family event for the season returns to the Wallsend Village car park on Thursday, October 31. It will include an appropriately Halloween-themed dance of the dead, shadow puppet workshops, costume crafting, a haunted house space, a scavenger hunt, a weeping forest, the boneyard, and giant, illuminated puppets from Curious Legends.
Families are encouraged to dress in their most terrifying costumes and enjoy the activities, treats and thrills of Wallsend Frights: Dance of the Dead. Tickets are available online.
