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Our Easter holiday craft project

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One thing has kept Helen and I busy over the Easter holidays: a craft project that involved making a paper mache dragon. The finished item was so colourful I simply had to share a few images of it!

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The paper mache dragon Helen and I made over the Easter holidays as part of a craft project.

Drawing their inspiration from the Snow Dragon by children’s author Vivian French, Helen and her classmates were asked to make a paper mache dragon over the holidays as a homework task. Helen came up with the initial design and together, we made it a reality.

You will notice this is a fire-breathing dragon. This was a personal touch of Helen’s and is a minor deviation from the Snow Dragon of the story book. Not that it bothers me, I figure the kids should use their imagination in these circumstances and merely a sign she found this craft project inspiring.

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Helen’s dragon breathes out fire. This is a small deviation from the Snow dragon character but so what?

I’ll tell you how we built it. The body is made up of old carrier bags rolled up into a long cylinder shape and covered in several layers of newspaper and a final layer of white paper.  Some of the paper was simply soaked in water, some of it coated in PVA glue to give the body strength.

The legs are made from 500ml plastic bottles. These were attached to the body using wire from an old coat hanger.

This, however, was not enough to hold the legs in place firmly. An awful lot of effort went into building up layers and layers of paper mache around the legs to give the dragon the strength to stand independently! While the dragon stands, the legs didn’t quite set straight but, hey, c’est la vie, no craft project goes entirely to plan, does it?

I bent the remaining wire from the coat hanger into a Y shape. Triangular shaped bits of card were attached the wire and it was then pushed into the rear of the dragon’s body before building up layers of paper mache to hold it in place.

 

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The tail of the paper mache dragon, made using off-cuts of an old coat hanger and a cereal box.

To finish off, I cut a hole for the wings in the dragon’s body and pushed a piece of card through the middle and then together, Helen and I made the spikes and Mrs Adams cut out the flaming tongue. Once fixed in place, Helen painted the dragon in these glorious colours.

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The dragon’s wings were very simple to put in place.

While time consuming and incredibly messy to make, it was also amazing fun. I look forward to hearing what Helen’s classmates and teacher make of this creation.

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The completed model dragon in profile.

I hope you all had a good Easter break. If you got up to any arts and crafts, please do leave a comment below. I’d love to know what you got up to.

 

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