Pipe Cleaner Bunnies and Chicks

Spring is just around the corner! With Spring comes bunnies and chicks! Why? Other than the obvious “easter” theme reason, which for me, is somewhat legit for me…but really I bought all these pipe cleaners and thought I better use these things up!

It’s going to take forever to use up the amount of pipe cleaners I actually have, however, at least I am making an effort with this super easy and adorable project.

Pipe cleaners are rolled tight into disks. Each rabbit will need two of these, one for the front/face and the other for the back of the head. Pink pipe cleaners are cut into three equal sections.

Technically, you can make any sort of animal head/face by using different colored pipe cleaners. I decided to try to make white rabbits and chicks. The basics on this is simple: pipe cleaners are rolled tight into tight disks , ears are made, then sandwiched between the disks to be finally glued together (I used hot glue, but any sort of glue will work).

White pipe cleaners are cut in half, then folded evenly around the previously cut pink pipe cleaner. Place a small dab of glue at the fold of the white pipe cleaner to anchor the inside pink pipe cleaner to the white one. Twist the loose bottom pipe cleaners together to keep everything together.

Ears are all folded into shapes, edges wrapping the insides of the ears. Rabbit ears can be tall, thin, short or even floppy. The pipe cleaners are sturdy, so I mostly wrapped white edges around the inside pink floofy wires.

Showing the ears being glued and the white pipe cleaner wrapping the inside of the ear. Twisting at the bottom of those ears, you place the ear bases into the flat disks. Once I placed the ears, I started to fill the disk with hot glue and made sure the ear bases got covered with the glue before I placed the “back” head disk on top (sandwiching the ears and the two face disks together.

Pom poms for face. One to color.

Once everything is glued together, small pom-poms and googly eyes are added. I used an alcohol marker to color one of the white pom-poms I had to turn pink. I also had different types of googly eyes to play around with.

Some of the rabbit faces I made. Depending on where you position eyes and mouth makes a big difference in expressiveness.

The Chicks were put together with the same sort of techniques: create an “egg” shaped disk in yellow, two matching per every chick you want to make. Cut two yellow pipe cleaners in half and fold each into a “wing” like shape. Mine is a tight zig-zag. Grab two sparkly-orange pipe cleaners, fold and shape into legs and feet. Once this is all together, place the wings on one of the disks (on opposite sides of the disks), then place one set of legs on the center bottom of your yellow disk. Just keep in mind it’s supposed to be a little bird, so position the bird parts so it looks anatomically correct. Once all these parts in place, fill the disk with glue and then, finish off with the “back” disk.

Add the googly eyes and cut the mouth out of an orange scrap paper. It’s a folded square that I trimmed to make it more beak-like.

I’m planning on using these for gifts or embellishments. Super cute!