Paper Plate Crafts

Here are 5 paper plate crafts to enjoy making and customising to create your own versions!

Paper Plate Owl

You will need:

• Paper plate
• Paints, colouring pencils, felt tip pens or crayons for decorating the paper plates
• Coloured card (for the owl’s eyes, beak and feet)
• Scissors
• Glue
• Ribbon

Making Instructions:

1. Fold the sides of the paper plate towards the middle and fold (top left image).
2. Now fold over the top of the paper plate to create the owl’s head (second image top row).
3. Open out the folded plate and paint the area inside the fold lines (third image top row). Wait for the paint to dry.
4. Glue the opened top and sides back down (top right image).
5. Paint the head and wings (bottom left image). Wait for the paint to dry.
6. Have fun painting your owl’s feathers in any way you choose! (second and third image bottom row).
7. Using coloured card, cut out 2 large circles and 2 smaller circles for the owl’s eyes, a triangle for the beak and 2 feet (third image bottom row).
8. Glue the beak, eyes and feet in place (bottom right image).
9. You can also add a length of ribbon to your owl so you can hang it up.

Why not make some more owls in different colours? Below are some brightly coloured owls which are painted and decorated with fabric squares.

Paper Plate Red Fox & Arctic Fox

You will need:

• Paper plate
• Orange and black coloured card for red fox (or use white card and colour it with felt pens, pencil or crayons).
• White card for arctic fox
• Orange and white tissue paper for red fox
• White tissue paper for arctic fox
• 2 wiggly eyes (or make your own with card and black marker)
• Black pom pom for nose (or make your own with black card)
• Scissors
• Glue
• Stapler

Making Instructions:

1. Cut paper plate in half. (top left image)
2. Using one of the halves, bring the corners together to create a cone shape and staple the straight edges together. Fold flat to create a triangle shape which will be the fox’s head. (top centre image)
3. Spread glue all over the fox’s head and body and stick tissue paper all over. (top right image) For the red fox, I mainly used orange tissue paper with bits of white paper for the fox’s cheeks, chest and tail tip. For the arctic fox, I used just white tissue paper.
4. Now glue the fox’s head to the body.
5. With the card, cut out 2 triangles for the fox’s ears, a circle of black card (if you don’t have a black pompom), 2 eyes (if you don’t have wiggly eyes), a tail and 4 legs (bottom left image).
6. Glue the eyes, ears, nose, legs and tail in place as shown. I also added tissue paper to the fox’s tail so it looked as fluffy as the rest of the body (bottom right image).

Paper Plate Snail

You will need:

• 1 large paper plate and 1 smaller paper plate (or 2 large and cut 1 a bit smaller)
• Paints, colouring pencils, felt tip pens or crayons for decorating the paper chains
• decorative bits and pieces such as mini pompoms, tissue paper, sequins & stickers
• 1 pipe cleaner
• Scissors
• Glue
• Wiggly eyes (or make your own with card and marker)
• Sticky tape

Making Instructions:

1. Paint one of the paper plates. Wait for paint to dry (top left image).
2. On the smaller plate, draw a spiral of glue round the plate (third image, top row).
3. Stick pompoms, tissue paper, sequins etc on the glue. Wait to dry (top right image).
4. Now take the large painted plate and fold it in half. Cut 2 small notches in the straight edge towards one end (bottom left image).
5. Cut the pipe cleaner in half (second image, bottom row).
6. Thread the pipe cleaner through the 2 notches. Glue 2 wiggle eyes to the top of the pipe cleaner (third image, bottom row).
7. Glue the snail’s shell to the body (bottom right image).