How to Make Decorative Snowmen Out of Paper Plates

Cabin fever often rears its ugly head in the form of bored, grumpy children when Winter is in full swing. Perhaps you need to find a way to occupy them and hold onto your sanity or maybe you have multiple children to keep entertained during a holiday party. This project will help you do just that while you make pretty decorations for your stocking wall or for your child's bedroom.

This project calls for inexpensive items and few tools so most of the project can be undertaken by children without direct adult supervision. This will allow you some free time to relax or catch up on chores while your occupied children have fun creating.

The paper plate, one of the staples for art supply closets in primary school classrooms everywhere is the main component of this project. This project involves using paper plates, scissors, glue, buttons and and optional art supplies such as: construction paper, markers, stickers, glitter, cotton balls to make decorative snowmen.

You will need to use two paper plates for each snowman. Cut a large circle out of one plate and a smaller circle out of the other plate. The large circle will become the snowman's body while the smaller circle will become the snowman's head. You can either glue or staple the small circle to the top of the large circle. I recommend using a stapler as glue is often not strong enough to keep the plates attached.

After you have attached the circles you are ready to decorate the snowman. Depending on how involved you wish the project to be you can use markers or crayons to just draw on features such as eyes and buttons, etc. Alternatively you can use buttons both on the body and on the face to make eyes. You can also different colors of construction paper to make features and items such as boots, mittens and a hat for the snowman. Then glue on any features you wish to add.

After you have added these decorations you may use glitter to make the snowman truly sparkle. If you wish to add glitter make a solution of glue and water. You will need to mix one part Elmer's glue with one part water. Stir the mixture thoroughly and then brush it on to your snowman, avoiding any features that you added. I suggest that you brush the mixture on to one half of the snowman at a time to avoid having the mix dry before you have a chance to add the glitter. After you have painted a section with glue sprinkle a small amount of glitter on to it. Repeat for the other half of the snowman.

After you have decorated the snowman and possibly added glitter allow the snowman to dry. After it has dried you are ready to hang it anywhere that you wish to decorate.

This project has many variations. One variation is to make small snow men, roughly the size of an average Christmas ornament. After you have finished making, decorating and drying the min-snowmen punch a whole in the top of the snowmen then thread pieces of string or brightly colored yarn through the holes and tie them off. Your snowmen will then be ready for you to hang on your tree.

Another variation on the project is to make mini-snowmen for a mobile. If you wish to try this then follow the steps above to make mini-snowmen. After you have made them, including threading yarn through them attach varying lengths of string to the loops of yarn running through the hole in the top of each snowman. Then attach the strings to a plastic coat hanger. You can then hang the coat hangar in any place that you wish to decorate.