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Make FREE Paper Animals With Your Home Printer

By Amanda Chittenden on March 24, 2020
Need a Fun Project While You're Stuck at Home? Make FREE Paper Animals With Your Home Printer! I'm at home.  You're at home. The KIDS are at home.  This feels like a test....how much do I love my spouse/children? We're going to get through it, we will, but if you're like me, you need some […]

Need a Fun Project While You're Stuck at Home? Make FREE Paper Animals With Your Home Printer!

I'm at home.  You're at home. The KIDS are at home.  This feels like a test....how much do I love my spouse/children? We're going to get through it, we will, but if you're like me, you need some distractions.  Let me show you how to make free paper animals at home with little more than your printer!

There are not a lot of ways to make things feel normal right now, and one of the things we've done over here is develop some new habits.  Eventually, those habits start to feel like something normal and familiar.  We downloaded Disney+, so in the evenings we now watch The Mandalorian together.  In the afternoons, my husband I make bubble tea.  We walk in the neighborhood as a family, which feels like a luxury we never used to have.

But in addition to finding your new normal, I personally need some distractions too.  I get caught up in my head, imagining the worst, questioning every cough or touch of asthma I may feel.   It's too easy to go down that spiral...so, distractions it is!  Straight-up down time for my brain.  

You want in? 

Let Me Introduce You to the Canon Creative Park

There's a website I found when I was just starting to tinker with papercrafts.  It has a wide range of paper projects available, from super-simple to uber-complicated.  Here's an example:

This is the Canon Creative Park website, and it's chock full of fun ideas. The first one I made was, in hindsight, probably a mistake, because it was complicated...but it did allow me to learn a lot quickly and so now here I am, making tutorials on how to put together the Canon Creative Park paper animals. 🙂   

Here was my first project, from about 4 years ago (he's seen better days and got played with a lot before I took him back for posterity.

Endless Possibilities for Paper Animals and More

At the time of writing this post, I have made and filmed 5 critters (plus the Easter basket and eggs you can see in the top pic...but it'll go up separately since it's not an animal). 🙂   

I'm trying to do as many as I can, because: 

  • Distraction
  • Craft projects you can do at home with virtually no craft supplies
  • Kids might enjoy it (although I think I dramatically overestimated the degree to which my 8 year old boy would like it!)
  • You end up with a bunch of toys that you didn't have to pay for

I know my perception of what you guys want to do at home right now is probably different than your actual desires, but if you have older kids at home, I encourage you to give this a try.  I used cardstock for the 5 videos I have posted so far on YouTube (if you follow me on YouTube you will have already seen them. If you don't follow me on YouTube and only follow the blog, then this is news!)  but if you don't have cardstock, that's okay too. The owl was made with just printer paper, so go ahead and give it a whirl.

 

A Playlist of Paper Animal Video Tutorials

In each of the videos below, I've included the link to that file.  Just open the video and you'll see the description link.  

Go ahead and subscribe on YouTube and ring the bell and you'll get a notification whenever I post a new one.  I'm aggregating them all into a playlist called "paper animals" (duh) on my channel, so they'll be easy to find.  

I'll link them all for you below, but I won't be writing another blog post about them, so if you want more paper critters, please subscribe to YouTube and you'll get them there! 

Stay well and stay sane, my friends,

https://youtu.be/bgy9USwUywAhttps://youtu.be/taK6obFSGu0https://youtu.be/vNtt6acThAkhttps://youtu.be/0AKqkvukzTchttps://youtu.be/qXi0ahWOdO4

Love,
Amanda

Article written by Amanda Chittenden

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I’m Amanda, and I put the AMANDA in A MANDAtory Activity (and I like a good bad pun). I run a blog, A Mandatory Activity, focused on baking and crafting for gatherings and gifts.

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