Homemade Butterfly Mobile Craft

Create some super-fly butterfly decor!

Submitted by
Laura

Bring springtime inside with this cute butterfly mobile craft. Using coffee filters, clothespins and food coloring, have your kid create butterflies to hang from the ceiling. The average butterfly has a lifespan of only two weeks, but these guys will hang around forever (at least until they're covered with so much dust they look more like moths than butterflies and your kid agrees to take them down).

Round coffee filters
Old-fashioned wooden clothespin
A straw or an eye/medicine dropper:
Snag the latter from your medicine cabinet. With all the colds, flu, ear infections, tummy aches, etc. your kid had this winter, we bet you have a medicine dropper (or six) lying around!
Food coloring:
In a variety of colors.
Cups or bowls:
One per food color.
Water
Embellishments:
Sequins, glitter, seed beads and buttons.
Glitter
Fishing wire:
For hanging.
A chopstick or twigs
Hot-glue gun and glue sticks:
Kids and hot glue don't mix, so make sure you do all the gluing.
White glue
Paint and paintbrush
Scissors

Place a few coffee filters on a table. These will be the butterfly's wings.
Mix the food coloring and water, using a separate bowl for each color. Use more or less food coloring depending on how saturated your kid wants the colors.
Then have her take the straw or eye/medicine dropper, suck a little colored water into it and then drop it onto the coffee filters. It will spread and bleed into the paper.
Have her drop more and more color onto the coffee filters until she is satisfied with the pattern.
Set the colored coffee filters aside to dry.
While the wings are drying, have your kid turn her attention to the butterfly's body, i.e., the clothespin. Get her to paint it, add sequins or buttons to it, dress it up with glitter, etc.
When she's finished, use your glue gun to hot-glue two seed beads onto the top as the butterfly's eyes.
Help your kid cut two small pieces of pipe cleaner for the antennae and, again, use the glue gun to hot-glue them on behind the eyes.
Let it dry.
Have her stack the coffee filters and gently gather them in the middle (so they look like a bow tie).
Clip the clothespin through the middle of the gathered filters to create wings. Gently pull them to even them out.
You can leave it at that, or if you've got more time to kill before dinner, have your kid repeat steps 1 through 11 to make a few more butterflies.
Then cut a few varying lengths of fishing wire and help your kid tie one end around each of the butterflies' bodies.
Help her tie the loose ends of the wire onto a chopstick or twig, balancing the butterflies out along the length of the stick.
Finally, cut another length of fishing wire and tie it onto the top of the twig or chopstick and make a loop for hanging.
Have your kid hang the butterfly mobile up in a window or from the ceiling in her room for a burst of super fly spring color!