Easy Children’s Craft: Swirling Snail Art

Here is a fun and cute and really simple children’s craft.  The kiddos can make these cute little snails and I bet they get a real kick out of making these.  This would be especially cute to make if your child likes the movie Turbo.  They could make this craft while you are getting dinner ready and then maybe catch Turbo after dinner for family night.

My girls actually did a similar project at the gym one day and they didn’t have time to finish the artwork so after a lot of pleading, I decided to just make the snails again with them at home so they could finish.

Since my girls enjoyed it so much, I thought your kiddos might like this craft as well.

You just need a few supplies:

• White Paper Plate
• Yellow construction paper (or color of your choice)
• washable finger paint
• pipe cleaner (optional)
• Googley Eye (optional)
• Glue
• Marble (optional)

And here are the easy instructions:

Start by putting about a dime size drop of paint on your paper plate.  We found the colors really blend together and can turn an ugly brown so it is best to stick to 2 colors that will mix nicely together.

I did orange and blue and it looked not so great.  My little girl chose red and yellow and hers turned out very pretty.  We also did orange and yellow and that turned out well.

You can either have your child use a paintbrush to swirl the paint around the plate or use fingers (always more fun!) or if you’d like to put a marble on the plate they can swirl the plate around and the marble will make circles.  Be careful if you decide to try the marble approach as your dining room chairs might be painted red from a loose marble. (ahem- not that I would know from experience).

Set aside your plate and let it dry.  My girls started with the marble and then finished by using fingers.  We added a pronounced swirl to the paint at the end with fingers to look more like a swirly snail shell.

While the paint dries you can cut the body of the snail.  I just did this freehand by tracing onto scrap paper the shape (sort of an l shape) and I made sure to put the plate on top of the shape to confirm the body was sized properly.  Then I cut that out and used it as a stencil to cut the bodies for our project.

Next we drew a little smile on our snails with Sharpie and I used a dab of hot glue to put an eyeball on his face.  Then we cut the pipe cleaner down and glued that on to look like the antenna.  (side note- do not google “What is the thing on the head of a snail called” unless you want to see some nasty photos.  Blech! People put snails on their faces– ack!!)

Once your plate dries you can just glue it onto the body and ta da!  A cute little craft to make the little people smile.

You can jazz it up even more by adding some glitter around the circle of the plate or add another layer of colors to the shell, you could glue on sprinkles of sand to make texture… whatever you like.

The kids really enjoyed this craft and it only takes a few minutes to set up and then clean up.  Give it a shot and let me know what you think in the comments below!

And here are a few other crafts you might enjoy:

How to Make Green Slime

Easy homemade bubbles-– these are awesome big thick bubbles.  I have made these in mason jars as party favors- so cute!