A Happy Handmade Unicorn Craft

A simple unicorn craft for kids made from toilet paper rolls. Plus a pegasus or three! And a way to weight the feet so they don’t tip over. The kids had so much fun making and playing with these!

Some awesome blogger friends of mine have joined together to offer an eBook full of fun kids’ crafts.

It’s called Happy Handmade and is just lovely—beautifully designed and filled with family-friendly craft projects.

I want to make almost everything in the book! Even the few ideas we’ve already done in some form or another, such as the tape-resist T-shirt and, of course, paper chain garlands (always a favorite!).

But my kids weighed in and voted for the toilet paper roll unicorns.

Because, well, they’re unicorns!

And because they have as much love for cardboard tubes as they do for unicorns. And as much love for toys and pretend play as they do for craft projects (more, probably). And because Daphne’s preschool is currently doing a month-long unit on magical creatures.

So unicorns it was.

A Unicorn Craft from Happy Handmade

I printed out the pages with the unicorn craft instructions and we set to work.

We had so much fun making these—and the kids have been enjoying playing with them.

We made a few little changes to ours and also made some pegasuses (pegasi?), so I thought I’d share a bit about our process here.

And then tell you how you can get this eBook…

How to Make Unicorns from Cardboard Tubes

Step 1: Cut out the unicorn pieces

For our unicorns, we used both toilet paper rolls as well as paper towel rolls cut into thirds. The template provided in the eBook made it easy to know how to cut out the unicorn pieces from the cardboard tubes. And while the instructions said to cut the head and horn from cardstock, we just used the extra cardboard from the toilet paper rolls and it worked fine.

Step 2: Paint the cardboard unicorn pieces

We painted all of our unicorn cardboard pieces with acrylic paint.

Step 3: Glue the unicorn together

Then, I set up the glue gun.

The instructions said to use tacky glue to assemble the pieces, but I didn’t have any (what kind of art studio am I running, anyway?!), but my motto is that when it’s at all possible to use a glue gun, a glue gun shall be used.

So easy! So quick! So fun!

Both kids are handy with a glue gun but I ended up doing the gluing while they were running around making noise and acting like animals.

Using a glue gun can be therapeutic and help you tune out the chaos around you…

Anyhoo… I digress…

Step 4: Add details

We added wings to some of our unicorns to turn them into pegasuses.

Daphne drew her faces on her unicorn and pegasus…

…but Maia and I went with the googly eyes suggested in the eBook.

The lightweight unicorns were a tad top heavy and tippy, so I glued some yard sale buttons to the insides of the feet as weights. A total hack, but it worked well!

Step 5: Play with your new cardboard unicorns!

Once the unicorns and pegasuses were finished, the girls played with them.

And it turns out that the hollow toilet paper roll construction makes them perfect as steeds for figurines!

Even Kristoff took a ride on a unicorn.

What do you think? Would you like to make some toilet paper roll unicorns?

You can learn more about the eBook or buy a copy for your family here.

Besides the unicorn craft (which comes from Kate of The Craft Train), the Happy Handmade ebook has lots of other fun kids crafts by creative bloggers including MollyMoo, Babble Dabble Do, Meri Cherry, Art Bar, Pink Stripey Socks, willowday, Small for Big, and others.

Enjoy!

Want more fun kids crafts that are also toys that kids can play with after they make them? Here are 21 Craft Ideas for Kids to Make then Play With.

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