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There may be just under three weeks left of it, but where live it is still officially Spring so I’m squeezing in a butterfly craft before it’s too late! Not that you only see butterflies in the Spring, we get them all year round but there are more to be seen at this time of year for sure. This is a simple craft using common materials that many people would have in the cupboard at home and a ‘god’s eye’ inspired technique to create the wings. If you don’t think you know what I’m talking about you’d probably recognise a God’s Eye stick weave if you saw it, it’s one of those classic crafts that everybody made back in the day as kids. Here is a lovely example from Art Bar. This is how we made our butterfly version…
You will need
• Craft sticks standard size – 2 per butterfly
• Pipe cleaners – 1 per butterfly
• Yarn in more than one colour
• Beads – 2 small and one larger one for the head per butterfly
How To
Place your craft sticks into an uneven ‘X’ shape as shown below and wind your first colour of yarn around and around, crossing over and winding in the other direction so the yarn holds the sticks in place securely. Then you are ready to begin waving.
Wind the yarn up the sticks a bit, switching into a figure 8 pattern as soon as you get to the gap between the sticks (in the picture below you might notice that I absent mindedly forgot to begin the figure 8 weave straight away, but it doesn’t really matter. There are no hard and fast rules here). To tie the thread off mid-weaveI simply tuck it into the winding so it pokes through like in the image below. It gets packed so tightly that the loose end stays in place pretty well once you begin winding on the next colour.
Begin your next colour and commence the figure 8 weave again. Change colours as many times as you want to before you get to the end of the wing (but the wings are small so the most I changed was three), and then repeat the same pattern on the other side. Below you can see what I mean by ‘figure 8’.
For the final tie-off I made a double knot at the end of the last colour used.
To create the butterfly’s body bend in half a pipe cleaner and wind it around the centre of the ‘X’ shape and twist it as shown below, then thread two small beads onto the bottom and one larger bead onto the top.
Finally curl the top of the pipe cleaner to create two antennae, and you’re done. Easy isn’t it!
More fun butterfly craft ideas
• Create a fun paper printed butterfly using our printable template
• Make a simple glitter peg butterfly (perfect for pre-schoolers)
• Use a kitchen sponge to create paint-stamped butterflies
• Make a sparkly butterfly fridge magnet also using a kitchen sponge
• Don’t forget the classic paper plate butterflies
• Use our printable template to create a cute washi tape butterfly-shaped wand
You can also find plenty of ideas on our Seasonal Crafts board on Pinterest. Are you following us?
So cute my elementary students will love this tomorrow. Thanks!
Great! Hope it goes down well, thanks Cheryl
This will be fantastic for my 4th graders at school, sense we are learning about butterflies this will be a great art project!
Sounds fabulous! Hope they like it.
Beautiful and colourful butterflies i will do it for my brother daughter who loves butterflies . I will decorate her room with this thnku
My daughter stayed home sick today, so we had a quiet craft day. She loved making these. Thank you:)
Aww, I hope she is feeling better soon and I’m so glad she enjoyed this craft project. Thank you for telling me!
These are adorable! Thanks for the great instructions.
These are really cute. How long does it take to make one (think 2nd /3rd grade skill level)?
For children that age I’d give it 30 minutes (and maybe even an hour), if they can do it quicker than that they could always make a second one. For myself I make them in 10 minutes.
Fabulous will do this with my brownies
Just wondering what length of pipe cleaners is needed? Thank you, looks like a fab craft!
I’m pretty sure I used standard length pipe cleaners, folded in half.
Thank you!
One of the reasons I love DIYs and handicrafts is that it transforms ordinary office supplies or anything unnoticeable in your house into these colorful and adorable pieces! You just gave me an idea on what to do on the remaining yarns and sticks that were leftovers of my previous handicraft experiment. Well I guess now is the best time to create this to gear up for my little sister’s birthday. I’m sure she’ll love this. I might even add this as my room décor. Thank you!
Thanks, hope your sister has a great party!
I have a couple of questions on your butterflies. I am gong to pre-cut the yarn because of circumstances. If I am going to make a 2 color butterfly – the center is one color. Do I cut 2 additional pieces for the outside wings? I was hoping when I first looked at these to make it was just 2 pieces of yarn – I tried it out last night and I’m not getting it to work that way. Please help
I’d use at least three pieces of yarn, one very long one for the centre – you can track back and do the other inside half on the other wing, and then two pieces of another colour for the outside on each wing. Hope this helps.
Do you know what size beads you used for both the head and tail? Also – approximately how much (length) of yarn is used per butterfly? Would love to make these – but have a limited budget per kid and want to make sure we get enough! Thank you!
To be honest I cant remember the exact size of the beads nor amount of yarn needed. For the beads maybe it was approx 10mm for the head and 7mm for the body but this is totally flexible. So long as they can be threaded on a pipe cleaner and are not tiny beads they’ll be fine. One standard sized ball of yarn would make a lot of butterflies, but seeing you are using multiple colours for the wings you’d need more than one.
I love this! So precious 🙂 I featured these butterflies on my blog today
Thank You for your craft. I will be using the butterfly craft with children who are have ask me to keep supplying them with different ideas. Spring is here. I love your craft Ideas. Will be visiting your website in the future.
Thank you! I hope the children enjoy making them