Egg Carton Animal Portraits

Turn egg cartons into adorable animal friends. All you need is a little imagination, some paint markers, and pretty paper and you'll have a super silly menagerie to hang on your wall. What new friends will you create?

20-60 minutes Ages 7-12

About This Project

A 20–60 minutes craft for ages 7–12, using supplies you likely already have — Scissors, White Glue, and Markers.

GlueStick supports kids from setup to cleanup. After they choose a project, we guide them through gathering the supplies, making it, and cleaning up when they're done. We'll even help them share it safely with trusted family and friends.

Ad-free and kid-safe library — designed by a mom who wants kids to explore and create independently.

Step 1: Cut out the head

Cut out the head of your animal. The large round bottom bit of an egg cup make great pig faces. The pointy parts between egg cups make great foxes, badgers, or bunnies. We used part of the egg carton flap for our goose. Other plastic containers work well, too! Our bear and hedgehog were made from macaroon packaging.

Step 2: Cut out ears or noses

Does your animal need big floppy ears, a pointy nose, or a bulbous beak? Cut those details from your egg carton, too.

Step 3: Color the head

Use paint markers to color the head of your critter. Remember to add eyes, noses, and mouths. Work with the curves of your egg carton to accentuate the animal's features. For our bear, we drew a round snout on our macaroon container. Our goose's beak used the curve in the egg carton. You can also color beyond the carton and onto the background paper. Our fox and badger's ears are on the background paper, as are our hedgehog's spines. We recommend drawing the background elements before glueing your animal onto the background. It makes the project go faster if you don't have to wait for glue to dry.

Step 4: Glue the face to your background

Add a thin line of glue to the edge of your head to glue the head to the paper. Note: for some animals, you may want to create their body before doing this step. You'll have to decide what works best for your design!

Step 5: Make the body

Cut a small rectangle of decorative paper for the animal's body. To make the body symmetrical (the same on the right and the left), fold the paper gently in half and cut both sides at once. You can layer multiple pieces of paper to make it look like your animal is wearing a sweater or jacket. If your body is too long, just trim the bottom off with a scissors after glueing it down. We recommend using a glue stick instead of white glue for this step. Adding too much white glue can make your body paper bubble and wrinkle.

Step 6: Accessorize your critter!

Give your animal a little more flair with some fringe grass, a stylish scarf, or sassy spectacles.

Egg Carton Animal Portraits

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