Make a pair of rainbow wings for dress up play! This is a fun recycling craft that will inspire imaginative play and keep them busy for hours.
This kids craft idea was first published in 2013 and has been updated and reshared for todays audience
What kid wouldn’t want a pair of rainbow wings to fly away with? In fact I wouldn’t mind a pair myself, haha.
These cardboard wings my kids made as preschoolers became a fun DIY toy we kept in their dress up box. They loved the process of making them and using their own creative licence with the decorating.
To make our wings we used cardboard inserts from new sets of sheets because they had folds in the right places. You could replace this with a large cardboard box though, and use the corner as the fold in the centre of your wings.
Use the template for the angel wing shape we used, or just sketch one yourself straight on to the cardboard. You could also try creating them in the shape of fairy or butterfly wings.
How to make a pair of cardboard rainbow wings
You will need:
- This angel wings template (or design your own shape)
- Recycled cardboard with a fold in the centre
- Acrylic paint
- Large sponge brushes
- Elastic
- Rainbow Feathers (optional), you could also use plastic gems, sparkles etc.
- PVA glue for the feathers
How to:
I gave the kids each a pallet of rainbow colours, some pva glue, and a container filled with rainbow feathers to share. We used wide sponge brushes because they cover more area at once.
Miss 4 set about painting a perfect looking rainbow across the back of hers. Miss 3 did a few different colour stripes and then mixed hers all together into a kind of mucky purple colour.
They loved having lots of colours to paint with at once!
In typical Miss K style she painted the wings for a little while (three minutes tops) but soon getting her hands into the messy paint seemed like much more fun.
She even painted her feet (“look, rainbow feet Mummy!”).
The paint dried very quick in the Spring heat. Once the paint had dries, Miss R put on the PVA glue and stuck her feathers on across-ways, matching up the colours to her rainbow stripes.
Miss K stuck a few feathers on and then added some pencil scribble, a few sequins she picked up off the ground and some christmas shapes left over from another crafting session.
Gorgeous!
Thread some thin elastic through the back so the kids can wear them, like I’ve done in this picture.
Now it’s time to play! Miss 4 happily modelled her beautiful new rainbow wings for me, while miss 3 preferred to “dress up” in her swimsuit instead.
Dressing up is so much fun, and it’s even better when they can make the dress ups themselves!
More dress up crafts for kids:
- Make your own super hero mask suing this set of mask shape templates
- Create a paper butterfly tiara and wand with our printable template
- Here is a sparkly fairy wand kids can make and decorate themselves
- Make a sea monster mask from a cardboard box
- These jingly ribbon dancing wands are lots of fun and take about 5 minutes to make
- Use paper scraps to make gorgeous paper scrap crowns
