Leo the Lightning Bug

Other day I decided to make cute Lightning Bug Craft. I actually made this craft for my toddler to play with (she loves it!) but it would be great for preschool and elementary age kids to make themselves (they will require some assistance with a hot glue gun).
Leo the Lightning Bug
What makes this craft fun is that it’s made on a clothespin. The clothespin gives it more of a 3-dimensional effect and also makes it more sturdy to play with. I cut my lightning bug body out of purple cardstock paper and my wings out of silver cardstock paper (you could use white). Then I cut 2 pipe cleaners into fourths, hot glued them on the back of the purple body as legs and antennae. You can see that I bent the pipe cleaners some to give the legs shape. To finish off Leo’s face, I attached wiggly eyes and used a black marker to draw a mouth and eyebrows.
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Next I hot glued the body to the front of the clothespin and the wings to the back of the clothespin. To finish the lightning bug I painted the bottom of his body with bright yellow paint and then sprinkled neon yellow glitter all over the paint while it was still wet. The glitter makes his light really glimmer.

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I have several of these glitter caddy’s and that is the glitter I used. They have one specifically with fun neon colors.

Below you can see how the lightning bug is assembled on the clothespin.

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I hot glued a magnet to the back of the clothespin so we could hang it on the fridge when my daughter isn’t playing with it. You could also just use the clothespin to attach it to something.
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