Create a beautiful 3D Seahorse paper craft with this template. This is a fun Summer craft for kids and the latest in our 3D Ocean Doodle Art series.
I adore seahorses. They’re one of the most romantic ocean animals, with males and females becoming partners for life. Not only that, they’re one of the few species on the planet where the male “gives birth”. After the female deposits her eggs in his pouch, the babies remain there until they’re big enough to be born as live young.
How cool is that?
Seahorses are celebrated as magical creatures in many fictional stories too. It’s easy to see why—they’re so whimsical and pretty!
This seahorse papercraft is simple to put together with basic cutting, gluing, and colouring involved. Older kids and tweens can pattern their seahorse and the weed in the background with doodle art. For younger kids, colouring it in is probably enough. To make it easier, they can also make it without the 3D support strips as a flat collage.
We have free printable doodle art design swatches to help with patterning ideas here.
As with all our doodle art projects, the age recommendation is 8 and up. Card stock is recommended for printing on but paper will also work.
How to make a 3D Seahorse Papercraft
You will need
- Card stock in white or coloured paper if you prefer
- Backing card stock in blue plus one additional colour for the torn paper element
- Markers – either permanent or regular kids washable markers
- Scissors
- Glue stick
- The seahorse template, available in our printables store and TPT store
How to
Print the seahorse and background elements to white card stock.
Colour and decorate the seahorse and seaweed. You can add pattern art as I have in the example, or simply colour in.
Cut the support strips out, then fold and glue them into squares.
Glue a strip of torn paper to the base of the background page. It can be green, brown or yellow to resemble an ocean floor, or an alternate shade of blue like the example pictured.
Glue the seaweed and rock into place, flat against the page.
Glue the support strips onto the backs of the seahorse, then glue this to the background.
With the more complex, patterned seahorse on the right, I’ve printed the seaweed page to green card stock and decorated with a darker shade of sharpie markers.
You could also optionally print your seahorse to card stock in any colour and decorate it in black sharpie—it’s up to you.
Now hang your seahorse on the wall to brighten up your home for Summer!
Also in this series:
- 3D Paper Hermit Crab
- 3D Seashell Art
- 3D Turtle Pattern Art
- Mixed Shell Templates in a range of sizes. These can be incorporated into your own art projects, or used as additional decorative elements for Ocean Animal art displays
Check out more of our Doodle Art Printables
