How to Make a Pipe Cleaner Bird

Create a flock of birds using nothing but pipe cleaners. You can use pipe cleaners to make birds in a variety of colors and shapes just by cutting and twisting pipe cleaners into different shapes. Follow these tips to make a pipe cleaner bird.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Pipe cleaners
• Scissors
• Googly eyes

1. Choose your color. Use yellow, orange and black pipe cleaners to make a canary or chick. Change the color to red to make a robin or cardinal. You can use blue for a blue bird and a variety of colors for a parrot.

2. Twist a long pipe cleaner, the color of your bird, into a spiral circle. Bend it around into a tiny circle and then keep going around the circle until you have a large circle. This is your bird’s head.

3. Cut and twist a black or orange pipe cleaner into a small triangle to make a beak. Twist it onto the head of the bird. You can place it on the flat side of the head if you want the bird looking forward or you can twist it onto the side of the head if you want it looking sideways.

4. Glue two googly eyes to the head to make the bird look more realistic. Glue them on the flat side of the head if you want the bird looking forward. You can also glue one on each flat side of the head if you want to see the side of the bird only.

5. Bend a large pipe cleaner into an oval shape to make the bird’s body. You can curve up the end to make the shape more life like.

6. Take a long pipe cleaner in the body color and bend it in half. Then bend each end toward the center to and twist the ends inward to make a wing. Repeat with another long pipe cleaner in the body color. Add them to the sides of the body if the bird is looking forward so one is on the left and one is on the right or add them to the top if the bird is looking forward. Twist to attach.

7. Add two small black pipe cleaners for legs. Cut a long black pipe cleaner in half and twist it around the body of the bird. Cut two very tiny black pieces from another pipe cleaner. Bend them into little triangles and turn them to resemble upside down v shapes. Twist them onto the legs of the bird by bending the leg piece upward around the middle of the reversed "v."

Tips & Warnings

• Play around with the shapes to get different sized birds.
• Glue feathers to the birds to make them more realistic.

[cdshafer]

on 8/21/2009 that is so cool!!!