Easy Butterfly Clothespin Craft to Make With Kids

This cute Butterfly Clothespin Craft is such a great one for kids to make in just four steps! Grab some clothespins, cupcake liners, and a few craft items to create these adorable flying friends, then add a magnet and stick them on the refrigerator.

Jump to:

• Easy Butterfly Clothespin Craft to Make With Kids
• Cupcake liner butterflies
• How do you make butterflies with cupcake liners?
• Clothespin crafts
• Fan out those wings
• Decorate the butterfly clothespin body
• Butterfly Clothespin Magnets
• Uses for your butterfly clothespin craft
• Want more fun spring craft ideas?
• Supplies for Butterfly Clothespin Craft
• Easy Butterfly Clothespin Craft to Make With Kids

Easy Butterfly Clothespin Craft to Make With Kids

Hey there. I was looking for a craft that young kids could make for spring and this Butterfly Clothespin Craft really fits the bill. It goes together in only four simple steps and you create beautiful butterflies.

Grab those cupcake liners from your kitchen shelf and a few wooden clothespins and you have most of what you need to get started on this craft. 

Cupcake liner butterflies

I was able to find some really cute cupcake liners with fun patterns on them in the store. There are many options in stores and online. They make this craft colorful and go together very quickly. But if you just have plain cupcake liners, like we usually have on the shelf for baking, those work equally as well

It’s fun for kids to decorate the plain cupcake liners and this would be part of the first step in this craft if you would like to do it.

Get out the markers or crayons and let them color on them with designs. If you are studying butterflies they could color them to mimic the colors on the wings of their favorite butterfly.

It’s wise to put some paper (newspaper, paper towel) out on your surface area and then flatten the cupcake liner out on that before they start doing their coloring.

It’s just hard to stay on top of that little round circle of paper without getting markers off the edge. That way the stray marks will go on the paper instead of on the countertop.

How do you make butterflies with cupcake liners?

The butterfly wings are made from those cupcake liners. Is there another name for cupcake liners? That’s what I’ve always called them but now that I’m writing it here it sounds kind of funny. Let me know if they have other names. Oh well, I digress.

Lay two cupcake liners out in front of you for your butterfly. I love the combination of a pattern and a plain together like I was able to do with the cupcake liners that I purchased.

We are going to accordion fold both cupcake liners as a first step.

Note: A smaller child may need help with an accordion fold as they are developing their fine motor skills.

If you would like to follow along on a full length video tutorial here is the link: Butterfly Clothespin Craft Full Length Video Tutorial.

Making an accordion fold

Fold the paper up along one edge a little less than a half of an inch. Flip the paper over and then fold it up again in the same amount.

Repeat this until you have folded up the entire cupcake liner. If this is not very clear to you it really helps to watch the full length tutorial video which will show you exactly what it looks like.

I remember learning to accordion fold when I was young and I made paper fans out of all my school papers and church bulletins!

Accordion fold both of your cupcake liners. Then fold them in half so you can see where the middle point is on each of those folded papers.

Clothespin crafts

Get those wooden clothespins out for this step.

Take the two liners and place them one on top of the other and pinch them between your fingers on that centerfold line that you made earlier.

I put my designed cupcake liner on the top and my solid one on the bottom for my butterfly, but you can put yours together, however you would like.

We are wanting to pinch them in way that makes them not as wide in the center. This is so you will be able to slip them into the clothespin, one on top of the other. They are a bit wide as they are right now. So kind of pinch and fold them in the center.

Then open up the clothespin and place that pinched center area of the cupcake liners in the little hollowed circle area of the clothespin. Allow it to shut over the two cupcake liners.

As you hold the clothespin in your hand, you should see the top paper and bottom paper as shown in the picture.

Traditional one pieced clothespin

I do want to mention that I’ve used the spring type of wooden clothespins in this craft. But you can also use the push on traditional one pieced clothespin that doesn’t have the metal spring in it. Those also work.

But you have to work a little harder to get the liners up in the little gap area between the wooden prongs of the traditional one piece clothespin.

I love those old-fashioned types of clothespins and their shape looks really nice as the body of a butterfly. But I will mention that they are round in shape and are not as easy to decorate later though.

Fan out those wings

The next step is to fan out those papers to be the wings of the butterfly.

This reminds me of working with making paper flowers out of tissue paper. I’ll put a link to that post at the bottom of this one. You may enjoy that one as well.

Gently pull on the cupcake liner one section at a time. Open up the folds of the paper so it fans out into a rounded shape. Repeat this with each of the four sections of the wings and you'll see the butterfly shape "unfold" (bad pun).

You need to pull on them gently and yet with a firm touch. If one of them rips, don’t worry about it. Keep fanning it out, and the tear will kind of get hidden in the shape of the wing.

Doesn’t that look nice? I just think this is such a satisfying and cute little craft even if that’s all I do to it!

Decorate the butterfly clothespin body

Now the last step is to add things to our butterfly body to decorate and personalize it.
The first thing I added were antennae. 

Antenna!!

Take a pipe cleaner and cut about a 4 inch piece. Twist the ends around the tip of a pencil to make the circular ends of each antenna.

Fold the pipe cleaner in half. Then gently open the top of the clothespin and slip that center folded area in so that the two antenna tips stick upwards from the clothespin.

I tend to always grab a black pipe cleaner, which is kind of a traditional way of doing it. But you can use any color pipe cleaner that you want to!

Googly eyes of course

I’m a big believer in adding googly eyes to things so you will see me adding googly eyes to every one of the butterflies that I decorate.

I use hot glue but for littles consider using tacky glue or self-adhesive googly eyes.

You can also draw eyes on your butterfly instead of using googly eyes if you would like.

Again, this is so cute you can leave it as is right here if you want, or you can continue to decorate the body of the butterfly.

Decorating the wooden clothespin of the butterflies

Take out the craft supplies you would like to use to decorate the clothespin body of the butterfly. Here are a couple ideas for you.

Idea one: color the clothespin

You can color the clothespin any color that you would like. Create a traditional black looking butterfly or use a bright color like red or purple or yellow!

Idea two: gemstone bling

I had a sheet of gemstones that I thought would be fun to use. A row of them down the body added bling to one of the butterflies. Mine were self-adhesive which made it so easy.

Idea three: pom-poms

The next butterfly was decorated with pom-poms and I must admit I think that it's my favorite.

Run a strip of glue the length of the clothespin and then lay the pom-poms in the glue and let them dry.

Note: I do show using hot glue in the pictures and video, but for small people I think it’s better to use tacky glue. Tacky glue dries and sticks faster than the Elmers glue which is why I recommend that here. Either will work though. 

So that gives three fun options for decorating your butterfly clothespin craft: coloring the body of the butterfly, adding gemstones and googly eyes, or adding pom-poms and googly eyes.

I’m sure you can come up with 100 more fun way to decorate your butterfly.

Butterfly Clothespin Magnets

Lastly, here's an extra bonus step!! You can glue a magnet to the back of the clothespin to make it a refrigerator magnet. Every refrigerator needs more magnets!

Place some hot glue on the back of the wooden clothespin. Place the magnet into the hot glue and allow it to cool.

I'm sure tacky glue could work for this purpose but would take more time to dry of course.

Uses for your butterfly clothespin craft

The butterfly clothespin craft would make a cute end of the school year gift for a teacher or a Mother’s Day gift. Oh, and don’t forget your Nana, Nana love things on her refrigerator!

This is good to make as a preschool butterfly craft or a grade school butterfly craft. It uses easy to find, inexpensive materials and is perfect for spring. Older kids would like it too, or they could help the younger kids.

A teacher may want to include it as a craft in a unit studying butterflies in their homeschool or school classroom. It would also make a cute Sunday school craft when studying certain themes.

Any butterfly lover would enjoy making the clothespin butterfly.

I really enjoyed making it myself so it could be a fun ladies night out craft too.

Here is the link to the full length video tutorial again if you are interested!! Butterfly Clothespin Craft Full Length Video Tutorial.

Want more fun spring craft ideas?

If you would like more fun crafts for spring, you might consider trying one of these.

• Tissue Paper Flowers (also uses accordion folds)
• How to Grow Spring Flower Bulbs Inside
• Coffee Filter Butterfly Craft
• Broccoli Painting: Spring Tree
• Paper Pinwheels for Spring
• There are several other butterfly crafts on the website as well

Supplies for Butterfly Clothespin Craft

• Clothes pins of whichever type you prefer
• Cupcake liners, either designed or plain
• Pipe cleaners
• Colored Markers
• Googly eyes (optional)
• Decorating items, such as pom-poms, gemstones, pony beads, other beads, etc.
• Hot glue gun and glue or tacky glue
• Round magnets (optional)