Halloween Crafts: Vampire Bat

The October holidays are in full swing here in Edinburgh, so I have two kids to entertain all week, and so far we have thrown ourselves in to crafting and baking. We made some really cute vampire bats out of empty toilet rolls (an idea I picked up from Mr Fox’s nursery last year), and I’ve put together a 30 second video to show how they are made:

If you prefer step by step instructions, then read on!

First of all, you will need:

• an empty cardboard roll (toilet paper roll, or similar cut to size)
• A4 sheet of black craft paper
• scraps of pink and white paper
• silver pipe cleaner
• googly eye stickers
• pencil
• scissors
• glue stick
• bat wing template

You can sketch out some bat wings yourself, or you can download our template:

>> Download Bat Wing Template

Step 1: Cut a strip of black paper the width of your cardboard tube and long enough to fit once round it.

Step 2: Cover one side of the black paper in glue and wrap around the cardboard tube.

Step 3: Draw and cut out a pair of bat wings – either draw around the template if you have downloaded it, or sketch and cut out a pair of wings free hand.

Step 4: Stick the cardboard tube on top of the bat wings.

Step 5: Stick on a pair of googly eyes. If you can’t get any googly eyes, draw some eyes on a scrap of white paper in black pen, cut out and stick on.

Step 6: Cut out a pair of fangs from a scrap of white paper and stick on.

Step 7: Cut out two long triangles from scraps of black craft paper, and two slightly smaller ones from scraps of pink paper. Stick the pink triangles on top of the black ones, then glue these to the inside rim of the cardboard tube for your bat’s ears.

Step 8: ADULTS ONLY – Make two holes on the bottom edge of the front of your cardboard tube (I used a hole punch for this, but you could also poke out some holes with scissors – be careful not to poke yourself!

Step 9: Cut the pipe cleaner in half. Fold each half in half again, then thread through the holes and twist around each other to make legs/ feet. Trim the pipe cleaners if they seem too long.

Voila! A finished vampire bat. This is an easy craft to make with kids. Older kids can cut out the pieces themselves using the template for the wings. For younger kids you might want to cut some of the pieces for them and let them do the glueing – e.g. my 4 yr old struggled cutting out the wings, but was fine cutting out the strip to cover the tune and the scraps for the fangs and ears.

I’d love to see your finished bats, so feel free to share and tag me on Twitter or Instagram!