A Fun and Easy Art Project: Make Animal Masks Using Paper Plates

Finding affordable art projects for your classroom, home, or even birthday party, can be a difficult task. Try this fun and exciting art project at school or at home! Your children or students will have a wonderful time creating their own colorful animal art and you will enjoy the affordability of this fun art project!

Animal Mask Art Project Needs

You will need paper plates (not styrofoam), glue, hold punchers, yarn or string (elastic), scissors, markers or crayons, and any sort of recyclable art materials (such as buttons, scraps of fabric or ribbon, glitter, stickers, magazines, or leftover scrapbook art supplies).

The Basics of Making an Animal Mask

Essentially each of the children will get one paper plate to decorate. You may want to precut the eyeholes before the children receive the paper plate, depending on the age and abilities of the children. When the children are finished with their fun animal mask, use the hold puncher to punch a single hole at 9:00 and 3:00 on the mask. Thread yarn or string through the holes for easy wearing. An alternative is to tape wide popsicle sticks onto the back and have the children hold the animal mask in front of their face. Elastic bands work better than yarn at keeping the animal mask on the child's face.

Making Frog Animal Mask Art

Using green paint or strips of green paper, decorate the paper plate. Use string or marker to create a wide line for the mouth. Take a long strip of pink fabric or a long strip of pink construction paper, slightly crinkled, to make the tongue. Glue the tongue to the mouth. For a fun and zany warty toad, glue brown and dark green buttons and sequins on the plate.

Making Lion Animal Mask Art

Using yellow paint or squares of yellow paper, decorate the paper plate. Use straws or pipe cleaners to make whiskers and draw in the lion's nose. For the fun lion mane, the children can glue fringed squares of orange paper around the perimeter of the mask. Use pink fabric or pink paper to make a tongue and black marker to draw in features like the eyebrows. For a tiger, omit the lion mane and use strips of black fabric or black paper to create the tiger stripes.

Making Fish Animal Mask Art

Have the children glue circles of colorful paper or color in scales all over their paper plates. The children can make the fish mouth out of construction paper or draw it over the scales. Use extra construction paper to make fins for the side and top of the paper plate. You may have the children make a fish tail, as well, for the bottom of the paper plate. Make sure the eyeholes are big and round. Glue sequins and glitter all over the fish for extra art fun.

Other Fun Animal Mask Ideas

You can incorporate an animal lesson into this fun art project. Encourage the children to use their imagination when they create their animal masks. They can make dinosaurs, unicorns, or even space creatures for a fun art exercise in imagination, or you can have them only make bird masks or jungle animal mask art. Encourage the children to incorporate many 3D art elements into the animal mask and to pay attention to details like whiskers, feathers, ears, and gills. After the children have finished creating their animal art mask, enjoy a fun animal parade around the classroom!