You can pretty much create anything using a plain white paper plate. Take a look at these adorable summer paper plate crafts we created into adorable characters. You don't have to travel far to discover a beautiful mermaid, a friendly pirate and his pirate ship, along with a colorful parrot and shimmering sea shells! Can you believe these were all created using a paper plate? Get started with a few simple craft supplies.
One paper plate creates two parrots. Using red and yellow acrylic paint, paint each half of the paper plate with one of the colors. When the plate has dried, cut the plate in half. On a second plate, paint the plate with red acrylic paint. Cut the red plate in half as well. The two toned plate will be your parrot's head and the red plate will be the body. Hot glue the two plates together as pictured. Be sure to have an adult help with the hot glue. With a black marker, draw the parrot's eye. Using colorful feathers, glue on the wings of your parrot. How adorable is this little parrot? Kids will love pretending to make him fly around the house.
Paint a paper plate using brown acrylic paint. Cut the plate in half to make two paper plate pirate ships. Cut a rectangle from black construction paper and glue to the back of your paper plate ship. With a 1" circle punch, cut three white circles for the ship's windows. Glue the windows onto the black rectangle. Add a bright red border to the top of the ship using red construction paper. For the pirate ship flag, we traced my daughter's hand and glued it to a small craft stick. In place of a skull, the girls added foam hearts to their pirate flags. Kids will have fun imagining themselves on their own pirate ship with this fun kids craft!
To make a skin tone color for the paint, we mixed orange and white acrylic paint. Once the plate has dried, use a black marker to draw the mermaid's eyes and mouth. With a 1" circle punch, cut two pink circles for the rosie cheeks. Using a larger circle punch, cut two larger (2") circles from brown construction paper to make her bathing suit coconut top. My daughter's attached yellow yarn for the mermaid's hair. For the tail of the mermaid we traced a large letter Y shape on green construction paper. Color scales onto the tail with green markers. To add a little sparkle, we used Elmer's glue and glitter for finishing touches. Little girls will love making this mermaid craft!
How cute did this pirate turn out? Combine orange and white paint to create a skin tone color. Grab a brown marker to create the stubbly pirate beard. Draw the eye and mouth of the pirate. Cut a 2" circle from black construction paper and cut off the tip of it to create the eye patch. With your favorite colored acrylic paint, pain the pirate's bandana. Glue two small leaf-shaped cutouts from blue construction paper and glue to the pirate's bandana. Boys and girls will love to pretend play pirates with this fun character.
The sea shell was one of our favorites to make. We combined purple and blue neon paint on a paper plate. Using a paint brush, swirl the paint brush into the two colors. With round, circular motions, paint the paper plate. Cut the bottom portion of the plate to resemble a sea shell. With white Elmer's glue, draw the grooves of the sea shell and cover in turquoise glitter! Wave the sea shell around to watch it glitter in the light!
