Clothespin Dragonfly

What You’ll Create

Bzzzz! 🦋 Your little entomologists will transform a wooden clothespin into a gorgeous dragonfly with stunning wings made from colourful tissue paper! Add googly eyes for personality, colour the body with markers, and your dragonfly is ready to clip onto curtains, plants, pencils, or anything it can grip. Make a whole swarm!

How to Set It Up

Step 1: Colour the Body

Take a wooden clothespin — this is your dragonfly’s body! Use markers to colour it a bold, beautiful colour — electric blue, emerald green, or sunset orange. Colour the whole thing, top and sides. The flat side will be the top of the dragonfly where the wings attach. 🎨

Step 2: Cut the Wings

Cut two matching wing shapes from tissue paper — each wing should be an elongated oval about 8–10 cm long and 3–4 cm wide. Dragonfly wings are long and narrow! You can use one colour or layer two colours together for a shimmery, translucent effect. ✂️

Step 3: Attach Wings and Eyes

Dab PVA glue on the flat top of the clothespin and press the two tissue paper wings on, angled slightly backward like a real dragonfly. Add a generous blob of glue to the front (the non-opening end) and stick on two googly eyes. The bigger the eyes, the cuter the dragonfly! Let everything dry. 👀

Step 4: Clip and Display

Once dry, your dragonfly is ready to fly! Squeeze the clothespin to open it and clip your dragonfly onto curtain edges, plant stems, lampshades, picture frames, or even onto someone’s sleeve as a wearable bug! Make a whole fleet in different colours and create a dragonfly garden on a branch! 🌿

Have fun!

• 🌈 Make a rainbow set — one dragonfly in every colour of the rainbow!
• 🌿 Clip dragonflies to a branch in a vase for a nature display!
• 🦗 Make other bugs too — bees, ladybirds, butterflies — start an insect collection!
• 💌 Clip a dragonfly to a card or gift as a special decoration!

Why It’s Amazing

• Entomology Introduction: Making a dragonfly teaches children about insect body structure — head, thorax, wings — through hands-on construction. 🔬

• Delicate Handling: Working with thin tissue paper develops a gentle touch and fine motor precision that’s different from cutting thicker materials. ✋

• Colour and Transparency: Layering tissue paper introduces the concept of translucency and how colours look when light passes through them. 🌈

• Purposeful Craft: Making something functional (a clip) rather than just decorative teaches children that art can be useful too! 📎

Pro Tips

For ages 3–5: Pre-cut the wing shapes and focus on colouring and gluing. Show them real photos of dragonflies so they know what they’re making. The clothespin clipping action is great finger exercise too!

For ages 5–8: Let them cut their own wings and experiment with wing shapes. Talk about symmetry — both wings should match! Research how many wings real dragonflies have (four!) and try making accurate double-wing sets.

For ages 8–12: Challenge them to create anatomically detailed dragonflies — segmented bodies drawn with fine markers, four separate wings with vein patterns drawn in fine-point pen, and wire antennae from thin pipe cleaner pieces. Display them as a natural history collection!

Secret Pro Move: For wings that really shimmer, scrunch the tissue paper lightly before gluing — it creates a textured, iridescent effect that catches the light beautifully, just like real dragonfly wings! 🪽