Recycled Craft: Toilet Paper Roll Owls

Howdy folks! This past weekend we celebrated E's 2nd birthday with an owl-themed party ("Who-who is turning 2?") and for the table centerpieces I crafted these cute owls out of toilet paper rolls. I combined ideas from two different blog sites, sassydealz.com (which seems to be down at the moment) and a free eye/beak printable from u-createcrafts.com.Here is how I made them:


Supplies: Two sheets of colored construction paper and one sheet of orange, one page of printed eye/beak combos, one inch hole punch, one inch heart punch, empty toilet paper roll, scissors, glue, pencil.

Step 1. Bend down a small section from the front and the back of the toilet paper roll to form the ear tufts.

Step 2. Punch 18-20 circles from one color of the construction paper. These will serve as the feathers on your owl. Glue two rows of circles to the middle of your toilet paper roll. I overlapped each circle as well as the two rows. (Conversely, I got to thinking after I made 12 of these (with some help from my mom) that using circular labels like these would have made this step go much faster. The only thing I like about using glued on circles is that the edges didn't stay flat and that gave the circles more of a feather-y look as opposed to using the circles which I assume would all stay down flat. I guess it just depends on the look you are going for and the amount of time you want to invest.)

Step 3. Cut out the eyes/beak combo and glue that onto the front of your toilet paper roll, overlapping the top row of circles just a bit. I only applied glue to the center of the eyes and the whole beak so that the sides of the eyes would stick out past the sides of the toilet paper roll.

Step 4. Free-hand draw four elongated hearts out of your other colored sheet of construction paper. These will serve as the wings. Glue two hearts together per wing.

Step 5. Glue the wings on the sides of your owl.

Step 6. Punch out one small heart from the orange construction paper for the feet. Fold the point side up and apply glue to that part and stick it to the bottom of the front of your owl.

And there you have it, a cute owl all made from recycled and recyclable materials!

The fun thing about these is that they can be made with any type or color paper so if you have small amounts of scrap book paper that you need to use up, these are perfect for that. Also, they would be cute for fall / Halloween decorations or I've even seen them without the feet and the bottom end pinched closed like the top and used as a small treat or gift card holder.

Take care,
J :)