Paper Plate Jeweled Butterfly Craft

We love butterflies!  My grandma, Dylan, Jake and Emma's great grandma, has always loved butterflies and has passed this love along to all of us.  I saw this adorable idea for a paper plate butterfly on Pinterest (see the other post here).  After I pinned it I ran out to the store to get the jewels we would need to make these. I love how perfect they look adorning our kitchen window.  We have requests from Nana and GG (great grandma) to make some for them as well!  Good thing these are easy, clean and fun!  They are a perfect craft for spring and summer!








 Materials:
- plain white paper plates
- scissors
- glue sticks (or regular glue)
- jewels
- pipe cleaners






This is so easy to set up and let your little ones get started.  All you need to do is cut 2 triangles in the paper plate.  One at the top and one at the bottom.  I drew it out so that I could show Dylan, Jake and Emma how I was forming the triangle.  They like to watch me set up the crafts.




Next I poured some of these beautiful jewels on a plate for each of them so they could have a nice selection to choose from.  I found a huge bag at Joann's that had regular rhinestones, but it also had different size hearts and stars too (The bag was $20, but I had a 50% off coupon).  I saw a similar jewel assortment later in the week at Walmart for $10 in their kids art section.  You will use these for lots of different projects so it's worth the $10 in my opinion. 




I handed everyone their cut out butterfly and a glue stick (glue sticks are strong enough to hold the jewels and are not as messy, but regular glue would work great as well).  Once they got started I realized I needed them to leave a space in the middle where the pipe cleaner was going to go so I drew a line down the middle and told them to glue on either side.  This worked perfectly.  They had so much fun decorating the butterflies.







When they were each finished I had them pick out which color pipe cleaners they wanted to use to make the antenna for their butterfly.  I twisted the bottom of two pieces together and then wrapped it around the center of the butterfly.  I rounded the pipe cleaner at the top and our butterflies were complete!  Beautiful, easy, and no mess!! 



Have fun making these with your kids!