Printable butterfly garden craft

Use our printable butterfly garden craft to upcycle an egg carton into a gorgeous decoration that doubles as a night light.

This is a fun kids’ craft for Spring, and Summer or to support a unit on insects or minibeasts. It’s also suitable for Earth Day coming up later this month.

Age recommendation is 6+ but younger kids could make it with adult help.

We love how these turned out!

Get the template in our printables store here

Butterflies are always fun to base a craft around because they’re so pretty. So far, all the butterfly crafts I’ve shared focus on the insect itself rather than the habitat it lives in.

I decided it was time to create a freestanding butterfly garden! This is similar to our Egg carton reef, only it has printable flowers, leaves and insects instead of tropical fish. There is also a colour-your-own version so kids can get more creative with it.

To turn your butterfly garden into a nightlight you’ll need plastic LED tealight candles. These can be reused into new crafts once you’ve had enough of the butterfly garden. I’ve been using the same set of tealights in various light-up-crafts for a couple of years now but this set on Amazon looks similar (affiliate link). You can also find them in most dollar stores.

If you have no tealights, you can make this without the light-up feature by using screwballs of yellow tissue paper in their place. Your garden will still look gorgeous.

Here’s how to make it …

How to make a printable butterfly garden craft

You will need:

Light card stock — recommended although paper will work if you have no card stock
Glue stick – I always use UHU brand (affiliate link) because it sticks best
Green acrylic paint
Scissors
Skewer
Green and yellow tissue paper
Egg carton base with the top and side flaps removed
2 Green pipe cleaners cut in half (or 4 half pipe cleaners)
6 LED tealight candles (optional)
6 Elastic bands if using tealights
Blu-tak for arranging loose butterflies (optional)
The butterfly garden template, available from our printables store

How to:

Print the template to card stock.

Paint the inside of your egg carton green.

Cut the template shapes out. For the butterflies and leaves, cut around the outer rectangles.

Fold the butterfly shapes, then cut around the wing shape on the side marked ‘front’. Unfold—it will still be joined on the top edge of one wing.

For four of the butterflies, place a pipe cleaner into the centre of the butterfly on the blank side, fold and glue into a double sided butterfly. Fold the wings so it looks like it’s flying. For the remaining two butterflies, fold and glue together without pipe cleaners.

For the leaves, fold, glue, then cut into a double-sided plant shape.

Wrap each tealight in a small square of yellow tissue paper, leaving the base uncovered so you can switch it on and off. Secure with an elastic band and trim away excess paper.

Fold the flower petals, then wrap the flower strips around the edge of the tealight and glue in place. Make six flowers in total.

Place the flowers in your egg carton cups. In the remaining six cups, add screwballs of green tissue wrap and the leaves. You can either wrap tissue paper around the leaves or slide them in behind the screwballs to your liking.

Use a skewer to poke holes in three of the egg carton points. Poke the butterflies on pipe cleaners into these holes. Place the butterflies not on pipe cleaners somewhere in your garden. You may need to use a little bit of blue-tak to keep them in place.