Make a Christmas carnival costume from paper

This Christmas and winter plant themed carnival costume is easy to make from paper, and really festive fun!

You will need

  • A4 paper - green, red and yellow are ideal

  • A printer to print out templates (but you can still make it if you don't have a printer)

  • Scissors

  • Pencil

  • Glue

  • Glitter, if you want to add some sparkle!

Create your headdress base

The first step for all the designs is to create the headdress base. You can do this with two pieces of A4. Download and print out the templates on page 6 & 7 of our downloadable booklet.

No printer? No problem - you can copy the shapes in the pictures below.

To put your base together you first take part 1, and stick one side of part 2 to it. Then measure around your head to stick the other end of part 2 to the other side of part 1. This forms a crown shape, where the top of heart shape will sit above your eyebrows.

You then take part 3 and part 4 and glue them to the inside of your crown shape, so that one of them crosses over the other to form a kind of top to your base like in the picture below.

Create your collar base

You can print out the four collar pieces you need on pages 8 to 11 of the PDF download. Cut them out and then clue each piece together. As you can see in the picture below, there are 4 shape - A, B, C and D. Fix them together, by folding and using the tabs in the template, then you will end up with the correct shape!

If you don't have a printer you can copy the shapes below onto A4 by hand before cutting out.

Print and decorate your plants, trees and stars

You can find templates for all the flowers, plants, trees and stars on pages 12 -15 of the download. It is good to print them out on different colours to get a really stunning effect. If you don't have different colour paper, you can still make this costume - just use white paper and paint your patterns. If you don't have a printer, don't worry - below you can see the patterns. You can just copy these out onto paper or card yourself before cutting out. Once you have cut out, and painted if necessary, the pieces you can then add a bit of sparkle to them with some glitter.

Decorate your headdress & collar

Now it is time to decorate your headdress and collar bases. You can be as creaive as you like here. Fill up all the space you can with your flowers, stars, petals, holly leaves, holly berries and Christmas trees. You can take inspiration from the photos below, or do it your own way!

You can see from the designs that our artists a have added extra detail with glitter, sequins, and pen to create more texture on the leaves and trees.

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Christmas Carnival Surprises

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How to make a Winter Wonderland carnival costume