Making animals out of paper is an endlessly popular craft to use with children of all ages, and it can become a fascinating hobby and even a sophisticated art form for adults. There are many traditional ways to craft paper animals, and lots of resources available to help you do it.
Instructions
1. Make paper bag animal puppets. Use a flattened paper lunch sack as the puppet base; the side where the bottom of the sack flaps over is the front, and the flap will form the head. Use crayons or markers to add realistic or fanciful animal facial features, and glue on front legs (where the "arms" would be on a human puppet), horns, yarn manes, tails and other details, or use printable templates from Enchanted Learning Software. Operate the puppet by slipping your hand inside the flattened paper bag and hooking your fingers into the flap so you can make the paper animal "talk."
2. Cut out animal paper chains. Start with a long strip of paper, approximately 3 inches by 24 inches. Accordion-fold the strip lengthwise into a 3-inch by 4-inch rectangle. Sketch the silhouette of a simple animal, seen from the side, on the rectangle, making sure that the animal's nose (or trunk, if it's an elephant) and tail each butt up against a short side of the rectangle. Then use sharp scissors to cut out the silhouette, making sure not to cut across the nose or tail; unfold the strip, and you should have a chain of six paper animals joined at nose or tail.
3. Recycle newspapers to make papier mache animals. Start by building a simple armature, or framework, using a toilet tissue roll as the body and taping on crumpled newspaper shapes for the head, legs and tail. Tear old newspapers into small pieces and thin strips, and make a half-and-half mixture of white glue and water; dip newspaper pieces into the glue and lay them on the armature, smoothing them in layers until the whole animal takes shape. After your creation is dry, paint it to add realistic or fun details and coat it with spray gloss.
4. Move on to the more intricate paper animals crafts of Japanese origami (paper folding) and Chinese jianzhi (paper cutting). Making even the simplest paper animals in these traditional ways can be a tricky art to master, so you might want to begin with origami kits like the Busy Kids Origami Animals kit from Jo-Ann's, that have preprinted animal features and easy folding directions, or download free patterns for Chinese paper cut zodiac animals from Hewlitt-Packard's Activity Center.
