DIY Butterfly Napkin Ring
Updated on June 23, 2021
Make your next family dinner or social gathering a stylish hit with these handmade DIY butterfly napkin holders! Perfect for a little girls’ birthday party or a baby shower! Follow along and see how I made this one.
Check out these photos and written instructions for making a butterfly napkin ring of your very own! If you’d prefer to follow a video, scroll to the bottom of this post to find a full tutorial there as well.
For this project, you’ll need:
- Toilet paper roll
- Blue paint
- A paintbrush
- Scissors
- A glue stick
- Pink pipe cleaner
- Crepe paper (orange and yellow)
Step 1: get ready
Gather your materials!
Step 2: cut the ring
Cut a piece off the end of your toilet paper roll that’s about an inch wide in order to make a smaller ring. This will be the base of your napkin ring.
Step 3: paint
Use your paintbrush to paint your freshly cut napkin ring blue (or whatever colour you’d prefer).
Step 4: cut the crepe paper
Cut a one inch by four inch rectangle from your yellow crepe paper. Then, cut a similar rectangle from your orange crepe paper. Fold each one in half length-wise.
Step 5: round the corner
Round off the corners of each of your doubled crepe paper strips using your scissors.
Step 6: shape the red pipe cleaner
Cut your red pipe cleaner in half. Take one half and gently bend that at the center so it curves like a U, the curl the ends over a little. This will be your butterfly’s antennae.
Step 7: body and legs
Bend your second piece of pipe cleaner into a curved U-shape as well and set it side. You’ll use this to make your butterfly’s body and legs in a moment.
Step 8: shape the wings
For each colour of crepe paper that you’ve rounded the corners off of, separate the two layers, apply glue on the middle of one, and place the other layer back on top, matching yellow with yellow and orange with orange.
Step 9: glue to ring
Apply glue on the top surface of your blue ring once it’s dry. Pinch each piece of your doubled crepe paper in the center so it cinches in the middle and expands towards the ends. Press the pinched center of each one into the glue, one above the other.
Step 10: twist the pipe cleaners
Hook your U-shaped pipe cleaner pieces onto each other so they meet at the center with their legs going in opposite directions. Twist the piece that does not have curls on the ends (i.e. the body piece), attaching the two at that spot.
Step 11: wrap
Place the napkin ring with its crepe paper pieces between the pipe cleaner legs that you just twisted so that one sits overtop, across the pinched centers of the paper, and one sits underneath, through the middle of the blue ring. Twist the two red pipe cleaner pieces around each other on the other side so they close around the ring and then, after several twists, trim each end so your butterfly has two little feet.
You’re all finished! Just in case you’d like to try this project out for yourself, here’s a fantastic tutorial video to help you!
