Posts Tagged ‘leprechaun crafts’

A few years ago my daughter and I started a new tradition…catching leprechauns on St. Patrick’s Day!

We found an adorable article and tutorial in Disney’s Family Fun magazine (one of my favorites for fun ideas!) and made our trap.  Then we set it out on the kitchen counter, with some bait, and went to bed.   We woke up to find that those sneaky leprechauns had gotten past our trap and taken our bait!  They danced across our counter tops with their little green shoes, left gold dust everywhere, and turned our milk green with their magic…they also left some “gold” goodies waiting for the P’s in their trap.

If you’d like to try and catch one…here’s what you do:

Materials:

Empty oatmeal container

green, gold, black felt

poster board

several twigs

“gold”

glue/scissors

glue gun

1. measure a piece of green felt large enough to wrap around the oatmeal container

2. cut a strip of black felt 1-2″ wide and as long as the green felt

3. cut a gold felt square with a hollow center

4. glue the black strip to the green felt

5. glue the gold square to the center of the gold strip.

6. cut out shamrock shapes (or use shamrock stickers) and glue onto the belt side of the felt.

7.  cut the center out of the lid to the oatmeal container.

8.  cut a circle of green felt the size of the oatmeal lid.

9.  starting at center of green circle, make cuts outwards, working your way around the circle in sort of a star pattern

10.  glue green circle to frame of oatmeal lid.

11.  Place onto the oatmeal container.

12. spread glue onto the back of the green felt and wrap it around the oatmeal container.

13.  cut another circle of green felt 1-2″ wider than the container.

14. glue circle to poster board.

15.  glue bottom of oatmeal container (or what we can now call a ‘leprechaun hat’) to the center of circle on the poster board.

16.  using twigs and a got glue gun, make a small ladder to reach from the poster board to the top of the ‘leprechaun hat’

15. place some ‘bait’ or crinkled up gold foil on the top of the hat, finishing off the trap.

Last year we definitely had a visit from some very sneaky leprechauns, as you can see from the photos below, but we weren’t able to catch any!  Darn!  They left us some treats and hopefully we will have better luck this year!

*the ‘gold’ dust was gold and green glitter that I sprinkled everywhere

**I used a barbie shoe and green crayola washable paint to make the foot prints

***the cups were already out on the counter with a few drops of green food coloring in them when the kids woke up, all you have to do is poor the milk into the cup and it will turn green right in front of their eyes! Leprechaun Magic!

****the leprechauns also left behind gold foiled chocolates for all of our trouble.  This year I also got some gold coins for them to leave behind.