Upcycle your paper rolls into an adorable pair of paper roll love birds. This is a fun Valentines Day recycling craft for kids of all ages.
Free printable template included.
You might also like our paper roll love bugs
Tweet tweet! How sweet are these paper roll lovebirds?
They are made using a “squash and cut” technique, similar to our paper roll dinosaurs and our paper roll bunnies. Just squash, trace, cut, and pop back into shape – then of course you need to decorate which is the fun part.
While we’ve used plastic googly eyes for our birdies, you could always sketch your own on white paper and glue them on for a more eco-friendly version.
How to make paper roll love birds
You will need
- Paper towel roll
- Acrylic paint
- Googly eyes — or use our free printable paper eyes for a more eco-friendly version
- Scissors
- Lead pencil
- Paintbrush
- Craft glue
- The printable lovebird template
How to
- Cut the template shape out following the black outline
- Flatten your paper roll, and lay the template on top of it
- Trace the shape with a lead pencil, if the template is too narrow for your paper roll simply extend the edges a little, making your outline go right to the fold’s edge
- Cut the shape out whilst your roll is still flattened
- Pop back out into a cylinder shape once again
- Using one of the folded offcut scraps, cut out a small beak
- Paint your bird. I painted the body one flat colour, and the tail a different colour. Allow the underlying flat colours to dry before adding more detail. In the meantime you can paint the beak.
- Once the flat colours have dried, paint a heart on the bird’s chest and spots on his tail (I used a q-tip for the tail).
- Glue two googly eyes and the beak in place and paint some rosy cheeks to finish off.
Of course, you can never have just one lovebird – it is Valentine’s day after all!
More Valentines Day craft ideas
- Make some friendly paper heart people
- These pebble lovebugs make a cute DIY Valentines gift
- Create marbled heart cards using process art and our printable template
- Use our free printable template to sew a sweetheart bookmark
