A couple weeks ago, I was up against a book deadline (LEGO Space Projects! Coming November 2019!), and the kids had a week of needing to entertain themselves with things that didn’t involve bickering while I finished up. My 12 year old asked me if he thought it would work to make the How to Train Your Dragon characters out of pipe cleaners and felt, and I said GO FOR IT! He spent about three days happily creating a collection of dragons.

I don’t have any instructions photos since I was typing away on a book manuscript while he made these, but I really wanted to share them because I thought they turned out so well!

I asked Gresham if he had any tips to share, and he said, “I just bent and folded the pipe cleaners until they looked right!” He cut the wings from felt and glued them on with hot glue. LOTS AND LOTS of hot glue, as you’ll see from the photos! Ha!

He started by making the head and body, and then made each leg by threading a pipe cleaner through the body. He also did a lot of trimming the pipe cleaners to make the pieces the right length.

Here’s Toothless:

The eyes are made by wrapping a green pipe cleaner around a black pipe cleaner in the head. I think it may look better to glue on some green beads for eyes, but then again, this works well.

And here’s Stormfly:

Here’s another angle so you can see the wing shape. The yellow pipe cleaners that he used for the spines on the head are actually smaller (more narrow) pipe cleaners.

Barf and Belch turned out really well. It was hard to get a good angle for a photo so that you can see both their faces – they are so adorable in person! Well, if a two-headed dragon can be adorable…

Here’s another view…

Here’s Hookfang:

And one more view. This one is another of my favorites! Well, I like all of them!

And last but not least, here’s Meatlug. Gresham said he was the hardest to make because of the chunky body.

Want more dragon craft ideas?

3 Comments

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  1. Gina L Gardner May 20, 2019

    I love this! Your son is a chip off the ole block. Super creative! We love How to Train Your Dragon. I'm going to try this with my boys. Great idea, thank you!

    Reply
  2. louis Jun 1, 2020

    there fun

    Reply
  3. Robyn Mar 8, 2021

    My 6 year old grandson make all sorts of things out of pipe cleaners and when I showed him these he was so excited to try them. Thanks

    Reply

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