This easy butterfly craft is actually two crafts in one. The butterflies can be folded and used as puppets with flapping wings. Alternatively, you can use our free template to create suncatcher butterflies. These will also work as puppets if you wish.
Our free downloadable template makes creating these butterflies simple. The final result looks great and is really easy for little hands to decorate.
Easy Butterfly Puppets and Sun-Catchers
Free Butterfly Template
You will need:
- Free butterfly template
- Scissors/craft knife
- Glue
- Large lolly sticks
- Black paint
- Black permanent marker
- Paint or coloured pens for decorating
- Alternatively, for the suncatchers, assorted coloured tissue-paper
- Black card
- Watercolour paper or coffee filters
Easy Butterfly Craft – Method
Download our free printable template and make sure you set to full-size when printing.
Paint the lolly sticks black and add twigs or pipe-cleaners for ‘antennae’.
At the most simple level, this craft can work by just cutting out the template, colouring-in/decorating your butterfly and sticking to the lolly-stick body.
However, if you are feeling creative, there are a few extra things you can do to make your butterfly fabulous. If you use a craft knife to cut out the white segments of your butterfly, you can create something similar to the image above. Just stick the cut out on to watercolour paper and let the paints run into one another for a pretty effect.
This also makes the wings a little more sturdy, meaning you can fold them in to give a ‘flapping’ wing effect for your butterfly puppet.
Butterfly Sun-Catchers
If you want to make a see-through butterfly, you will need black card. Cut out the template as usual and stick down onto the card. Using scissors or a craft knife, carefully cut out the white sections right the way through, so that you have holes in your butterfly. Stick small pieces of tissue paper to the back of the butterfly, taking care to cover all the gaps.
Once the tissue paper is dry, you can stick your wings to the black lolly sticks just as with the other versions above. You can then either use the butterfly as a puppet or put it up in a window to create a beautiful sun-catcher. Finally, f you fold the wings slightly where they are attached to the lolly sticks, then they will flap when you wave them up and down!
You can make these butterflies in a few minutes if you wish, or choose to spend a little more time.
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