Paper Roll Dragon Craft

Make an adorable fire-breathing dragon out of a toilet paper roll! This is a fun craft for kids that uses recycled materials and a few simple supplies from your craft stash. It’s a great dragon craft to go with a study of knights and castles, a fairytale story, or just a fun art project for a rainy day.

If you don’t like to use toilet paper rolls, or if you work for a school or daycare that doesn’t allow them, you can cut a paper towel roll down to the right length. You can also buy cardboard tubes that are made for crafting at many craft stores. Our Hobby Lobby has them.

Supplies Needed:

• Toilet paper roll
• Cardboard egg carton
• Cereal box or something similar (for the tail)
• Craft foam
• Googly eyes
• Paint – we used acrylic
• Scissors
• Glue – hot glue or another craft glue
• Origami paper, tissue paper, or construction paper for the flames

We used origami paper for the flames, and it worked great! Just the right weight. But you can also use construction paper or tissue paper.

Ready to make your own paper roll dragon craft?

Start by cutting a section from your egg carton to make the dragon’s head. Our egg cartons had a little circle at the bottom of each section, so it was easy to cut out the circle and make an open mouth.

Then paint the cardboard tube to make the dragon’s body, and paint the head.

Glue the head to the top of the dragon’s body. Add some googly eyes.

Note: I cut the egg carton to fit the curve of the toilet paper roll. This made it much easier to glue on the head.

Cut out wings from craft foam. Then cut out feet, arms, and horns.

Glue on the wings, feet, arms, and horns.

Then, make a tail. Cut the tail from cereal box cardboard, or something similar. Paint it to match the dragon, and then glue on spikes.

To attach the tail, cut a slit in the cardboard tube and then insert the tail. This is much easier than trying to glue the tail to the tube!

(Sorry to switch colors! I photographed this step with a different dragon.)

The completed dragons are just too cute!

Here’s a view from the back so you can see the tail.

Cut flames out of paper and insert them in the dragon’s mouth.

Have fun making fire-breathing dragons!

Need more dragon craft ideas?

Here are 4 Printable Dragon Coloring Pages that kids will love!

Pipe Cleaner Dragons – Make the dragons from How to Train Your Dragon out of felt and pipe cleaners. So fun.

Here are some fun Mini Dragons to build with LEGO Bricks.