How to Make Egg Carton Bugs: The Perfect Cheap Kids Craft

In this post you will learn how to make a simple craft: Egg carton bugs.

There are so many ways egg cartons can be re-purposed. They just come in handy, so save your egg cartons, you never know what you can do with them. It’s not hard in our family because we eat so many. Breakfast is one of our go-to meals.

One of my favorite things to do with egg cartons is to use them as your paint pallet. They easily separate the paint, the paint doesn’t get everywhere, and it can easily be thrown away. You could also re-use it. Once the paint is dry, you can just keep adding paint on top until it’s been used too many times.

I digress, Egg carton bugs are so fun, easy, and cheap to make. I thought they were so cute, I wanted to display them on my counter for a few days.

We made lady bugs, centipedes, caterpillars, and spiders, but you could really make just about any bug.    

Here’s how we did it.

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How to Make Egg Carton Bugs

Supplies:

Egg carton (You can never have too many. Just save them as you use your eggs, or you can get some online for crafts. (Also, the foam or the cardboard ones work for this craft)
Scissors
Paint
Paint Brushes
Pipe Cleaners
Googly eyes (optional)

Instructions:

Depending on what type of bug you want to make, cut out your bug from the egg carton by using the side of the egg carton that has the cups that hold the eggs. (I had no better way to describe that) Lady bugs, spiders, or beetles are just one hump. I mean, you could probably do as many as you want. Spiders could probably get away with 2. Whatever feels good to you.

Ants would probably be 3, then you have caterpillars and centipedes which would be however long you want to make them. You can cut off the edges to round them off and make them look all nice, but that’s up to you. They look cute regardless.

Once they are cut, then paint them. My daughter did a pretty pattern with different colors, and my son just went to town, not even painting the whole thing.

I liked painting these. It was relaxing. I thought the paint might not hold onto the Styrofoam that well, but it did. I did have to do two layers of paint on some of the colors, but it turned out great. You can paint on faces, or not, or wait until they dry and add googly eyes.

Let them dry.

If you want, stick on some googly eyes. We didn’t because this was a last minute craft and I didn’t have any on hand. We painted ours on and it turned out just fine.

After it’s dry, you can stick on the legs with the pipe cleaners. The pipe cleaners poked right through the Styrofoam like butter. I thought I might have to make a hole first because I didn’t want the pipe cleaners to tear a big whole in it. However, it went right in. You hardly had to push at all. I cut the pipe cleaners in half and then pushed it through to make legs on both sides. I felt like this was the perfect size for the legs.

My kids wanted to do their own size legs, so my daughter cut a small segment for each one of her legs, and my son wanted them really long. They all turned out great.

Aren’t they just too cute…

This would make a great decoration for a bug party. Haha. These were so fun, and they are fun to play with after you make them. My son toted his around all afternoon as his baby.

And that’s how you make Egg Carton Bugs!

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