Pipe Cleaner Bird

For this year's Teachers' Day gift, I'm helping my son do Memo Animal Clips for his teachers.

How they were done was purely accidental. I meant to do something else using straight pipe cleaners but the shops at my place here doesn't carry them anymore so I bought a similar one; those you use to tie on your plants during Chinese New Year. But I'm not able to use it to make the craft i intend to do.

However, after some twisting an twirling, the pipe cleaners became a ball. After adding some animal parts, the animal became visible. I think it's rather cute. My son's favourite is the Bird and mine is the Bee.

For this craft, I prepared the 'ball' as the head, cut all the parts required for the individual animals and my son did the bending and sticking. (Video instructions is at the end of this post)

click on the photo to enlarge

Materials required:

• Clothes pegs
• Wiggle eyes
• 'Bumpy' pipe cleaners
• Straight pipe cleaners (optional for some animals)
• Glue

Parts required for Bee:

• 1 bumpy pipe cleaner ball, as body
• 2 straight pipe cleaner long enough to go round the ball as strip on bee
• 2 bump of bumpy pipe cleaner, bend to form wings
• 2 wiggle eyes

Parts required for Mouse:

• 1 bumpy pipe cleaner ball, as body
• 2 straight pipe cleaner, bend half as whiskers
• 1 straight pipe cleaner, twisted round a pencil as tail
• 2 wiggle eyes

Parts required for Bunny:

• 1 bumpy pipe cleaner ball, as head
• 2 bump of bumpy pipe cleaner, bend to form ears
• 2 wiggle eyes

Parts required for Cat:

• 1 bumpy pipe cleaner ball, as head
• 2 straight pipe cleaner, bend half as whiskers
• 1 bump of bumpy pipe cleaner, half and bend to ears
• 2 wiggle eyes

Parts required for Spider:

• 1 bumpy pipe cleaner ball, as body
• 8 straight pipe cleaner, bend 30 degrees angle to form legs
• 2 wiggle eyes

Parts required for Duck:

• 1 bumpy pipe cleaner ball, as head
• 1 bump of bumpy pipe cleaner, bend like a 'C' to form beak
• 2 wiggle eyes

Parts required for Elephant:

• 1 bumpy pipe cleaner ball, as head
• 2 bump of bumpy pipe cleaner, bend to form ears
• 1 bump of bumpy pipe cleaner, bend like a 'S' to form trunk
• 2 wiggle eyes

Parts required for Dog:

• 1 bumpy pipe cleaner ball, as head
• 2 bump of bumpy pipe cleaner, bend to form ears
• 2 wiggle eyes

I know you will wonder what the materials looked like and how the ball is form. So here my video (my first!!) on how to assemble the bird, my son's favourite.

Parts required for the Bird are:

• 1 bumpy pipe cleaner ball, as body
• 1 bump of bumpy pipe cleaner, half and bend to form wings
  
• 1 bump of bumpy pipe cleaner, cut 1/4 from tip to form beak
• 1 straight pipe cleaner, twisted round a pencil as tail
• 2 wiggle eyes

There isn't any rule to how you twist the pipe cleaner into a ball. You just need to cross it so it will not become a spring. After removing it from the pencil, all you need to do is to gently shape to make it rounder and for the mouse and bee, more oblong.

Hope you like this craft and have fun!