Super Easy Paper Blue Morphos Kids can Make
Brighten your day with these beautiful paper Blue Morpho Butterflies! They’re super easy to make and I know you have everything needed in your craft stash.
The Butterfly House in St. Louis celebrates the blue morpho with Morpho Mardi Gras all through February and March. They’ll have thousands of butterflies in the conservatory to amaze your kiddos–and most will be the awesome and HUGE blue morpho.
Wish you could take a blue morpho home with you? Well, I don’t think they make great pets–after all, the eat rotten bananas and are too delicate to pet! So make these paper butterflies instead!
You can make this butterfly with just about anything: plain white paper, colorful construction paper or tissue paper. I’ll give you directions to make your butterfly look like a blue morpho, but you can use any color you like–there’s a lot of butterflies in the world!
This craft was inspired by a similar paper butterfly done by Red Ted Art. She made a fabulous YouTube video you can watch to better understand the folding technique.
How to Fold a Paper Butterfly
Let's make a beautiful Blue Morpho butterfly!
Materials
- Paper (plain, construction or tissue)
- Crayons or markers
- Fuzzy sticks
- Glitter glue (optional)
Tools
- Scissors
Instructions
- Cut your paper into a square.
- Take the square and fold it in half, then cut into two rectangles.
- Take one strip and accordion fold it along the short end. I made each fold about a half inch wide.
- Now fold the second strip in half lengthwise (see the image) and open back up. Fold the corners to the center fold (like you're making a paper airplane. Cut off the corners.
- Next fold it like an accordion along the long edge--use the same size folds as the other strip.
- Open your strips of paper and flatten them out. If you're using white paper, use crayons to make the butterfly blue and add a black stripe along the edges as shown. Tissue paper and construction paper butterflies just need the black stripe.
- Bonus: add red dots along the stripe with glitter glue! If you use glue, you'll need to give the paper time to dry before moving on the next step.
- Fold the butterfly back up along the creases you made. Fold each strip in half.
- Cut your fuzzie stick in half.
- Place the two folded parts of the butterfly together as shown. Wrap the fuzzie stick around the middle and twist the ends together. The extra fuzzie stick will represent the butterfly body.
- Take the second half of the fuzzie stick and slip it under the loop of the first half. Bend in half and twist a couple times to secure. Curl the ends into a loop--this is the butterflies antenna.
Notes
An easy way to get a perfect piece of square paper is to fold over one corner (see image below) and cut off the extra.
