Make Your Own Cardboard Butterfly Wings

We have had butterflies on the brain since we've recently played in a Butterfly Small World and Raised Our Own Butterflies.

So it shouldn't be SO surprising that the other day an amazing thing happened!  A beautiful (and I think rare?) rainbow butterfly came to visit our house.  It flew from one end of our deck to the other very quickly!

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And it was off again!  Making a really silly face as it ran by!  Baby X and I got to marvel at its beauty (and speed) for quite some time before it disappeared.

If you would like to have a beautiful giant butterfly visit you, we've got some pointers.  First, you'll need a big cardboard box.  If you have your child lay down by the box, you can eyeball how big the wings of a giant butterfly ought to be.  I cut one wing and then used it to trace the opposite.  I overlapped them slightly to make the center very strong, taped it with packing tape and used some black adhesive foam to make the shape of a butterfly's body.  I punched four holes (one above and one below her shoulder on each side) and threaded some spare orange ribbon through and taped it down.

I added watercolor paper over both sides of the wings and lined the wing edges with black masking tape (the same tape I use to make frames around S's artwork in our Art Room).  We used liquid watercolors to paint, but you could also use traditional watercolors and get a similar result (our favorite traditional watercolors are these). 

S wanted to make a pattern on the butterfly's wings, so I cut some shapes out of the black sticky foam and we talked about symmetry.  S applied the shapes symmetrically to each wing herself.

Once we had some dry wings, we added some purple pipecleaner antennae to a headband and waited.  We were so lucky to have this beautiful butterfly visit - too bad S was missing for the whole thing!  ;)

This activity was inspired by these awesome cardboard fairy wings from Outnumbered by Kids.

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Please always supervise your infant/child at play.  Please stay within arms reach and never leave infants/children unattended.