Frugal Craft: Paper Towel Butterflies

I love a craft that's so easy a 2-year old can do it... because that means I probably have the capability to do it! I found this so cute butterfly craft tutorial here and jumped on it today with my 2-year old while my toddler took a nap.

All you need is:
plain white paper towels
food coloring
pipe cleaners

If you're like me, you will also lay down towels and newspapers everywhere because Who Knows Where That Food Coloring Will Land and my husband has eagle eyes!

Mix your food coloring with water in separate bowls.

Fold your paper towel in halves until it's in sixteenths. Allow your child to dip the corner of the folded paper towel into the colored water of their choosing.

Try not to have the paper towel dipped for too long, but let the kids experiment. This was a great test in patience for me, as I seemed to want Brianna to do it a certain way, but in the end it was so much more satisfying and relaxing for me to just let her go! After all, she couldn't get it wrong!

After each paper towel was dipped on all corners, I opened up the paper towel all the way, laid them on a baking sheet, and then we'd carry them outside to dry.

I got Brianna to rearrange the order of the colors every time, so it was fun to see how different they turned out.

When the paper towels were completely dry (only took a couple of hours or less on this 65-degree day!), gather along the center of each paper towel, wrap a pipe cleaner around the center, twist it off, even out the wings, flatten the body, and curl the antennas.

 And watch your daughter's face light up when she sees them hanging from her ceiling.

I am so in love with this craft, and we will definitely be doing this again over the summer. Bri really didn't want to stop, but after 10 paper towels we didn't have anywhere else to lay them out to dry! Perfect craft for a 2-year old (or older child) but I definitely wouldn't try it with Hunter (17 months). He's definitely not patient enough!