Birthday Party Animal Hats

So you’re having a birthday party with a bunch of your friends and want everyone to make something creative, that is fun and they can take home to remember your party by. Well, why not have everyone decorate and turn a birthday party hat into a party animal hat! Everyone can choose their own animal from a selection of pre-drawn templates or design their own animal hat.

Materials

• Cardboard birthday hats with elastic (inexpensive hats)
• Variety of colored construction paper or heavy cardstock
• Scissors
• Tape and Glue
• Pencil
• Colored Pencils/markers/crayons
• Googly eyes, pipe cleaners, feathers, flowers, etc. (optional)

Steps

1. If you are choosing to use this project for a birthday party with several kids then you want to be prepared and have everything ready for when the kids get there. Have enough supplies for everyone and lots of colored paper to choose from.
2. Depending on the age of the kids coming to the party you may want to prepare by having a bunch of pre-drawn templates for the animals face, ears, legs and tail on white cardstock.
3. Then cut out each template and trace the outer edge with a black marker and write the word “template” on them (so that no will use them on their hat and so you can keep them to reuse).
4. Next take your templates and make your own animal hat to have as an example using the steps below.

Have Kids ….

Decide on an animal they would like to make.

1. Decide what color they would like to make their animal and what style of ears, legs and tail their animal would have.
2. Trace those templates onto the paper they picked out, including their party hat (which will be the body) then cut them out.
3. Color in their pieces.
4. Put the party hat back together and glue the body on top of that.
5. Attach the legs, tail, face, ears, etc. to the body including any googly eyes, feathers, etc.
6. Make sure that the elastic string is securely attached and everyone is ready to wear their Party Animal Hats to the Birthday Party!!!!!

Optional animal ideas: monkey, dog, cat, frog, bird, shark, spider, penguin, dinosaur.

Dawn Sorem teaches arts and crafts classes and she does private classes/parties for both children and adults. If you would like more information or to set up a time to have her do an art project for a group you can contact her at envelopcards@gmail.com. Dawn is also the owner and designer of Envelop Cards, you can view her latest designs and see a list of her upcoming classes at: www.envelopcards.com.