I’m always looking for ways to use our loom bands. They’re such a cheap craft resource and come in so many fabulous colours! This bendy paper and loom band snake craft is great for showing them off to their best!
Cleverly but simply made from just paper and loom bands these homemade snakes can be made big or small, fat or thin and in any colours you like! Kids can have great fun playing with them and bending them into all sorts of shapes too, what fun!
It wasn’t that long ago that loom bands took every school yard by storm, and every kid was crazy for them. Interests and fads come and go though and if your family is anything like ours then you’ll have a pile of loom bands gathering dust now the initial excitement has faded!
I’m sure we’ll get back into using our loom again in the future so I certainly won’t be getting rid of it but in the meantime it’s fun to find other uses for all those pretty coloured little elastic loom bands isn’t it?
This loom band snake craft is a great way to use them and makes a super addition to our animal craft collection. If you like animal crafts as much as we do then do take a peek at some of our other favourites while you here. Sharing them on your Facebook or Pinterest is a great way to save them to come back to later and to inspire your friends too.
More Animal Crafts To Save For Later
Our Mix ‘N’ Match Articulated Snake has been super popular and so has our TP roll Jungle Animal Set. (I love making fun stuff from junk don’t you?) Squeeze ‘N’ Croak Frogs are recycled too and loads of fun to “Ribbit, Ribbit”! If your kids like pretending to be animals why not try them with our cute paper plate Bunny Mask. It sits on the forehead so it even works for glasses wearers!
Bendy Paper and Loom Band Snake Craft
Supplies To Make Loom Band Snake Toys
- Newspaper
- Colourful Tissue Paper
- Loom Bands
- Googly Eyes
- Glue
How To Make Bendy Loom Band Snakes
This cute bendy loom band snake craft is really easy and super cheap to make! This is a recycled craft making good use of old newspapers and left over loom bands. Don’t worry if you don’t have any loom bands you could always use ordinary elastic bands instead.
To make your loom band snake start by loosely rolling up a couple of sheets of newspaper. Make your paper roll as long or short and as fat and thin as you like. Each homemade snake toy can be totally different!
Give your newspaper a bit of a twist and then flatten and fold over one end which you’ll use to make the head.
Leaving the folded head end poking out, loosely wrap your newspaper snake in a layer of brightly coloured tissue paper. Do keep things loose as this will allow you to bend your snake craft without the paper tearing too easily later. If you wrap it too tightly the paper will tear straight away when you bend the snake!
Use a couple of loom bands to secure the tissue paper at either end of the snake’s body.
To make your homemade snake’s head cut a double thickness of tissue paper approximately 30 cm by 20cm. (We used x2 A4 sheets.) Fold the paper in half lengthways and put the folded newspaper end of your snake into one end. (See photo above.)
Roll the tissue paper round and round the snake’s head and secure it in place with a loom band.
In the photo above you’ll see that the end of the tissue paper is left hanging because there’s no loom band securing that bit. We stuck ours down with a dab of glue.
Now comes to the fun part of decorating your homemade snake toy with all your gorgeous colours of loom bands. Did you know you can even get colour change and glow in the dark loom bands now? Awesome!
This is great fine motor practice for little hands! If you’ve made a fat snake then your loom bands can probably go straight on. If like ours your paper snakes are a bit thinner then you’ll need to fold your bands over to double their thickness and make them tighter.
You can use all the same colour loom bands to decorate your snake craft or mix and match them or maybe follow a repeating pattern.
When you get to making your snake’s tail you’ll definitely want to double or triple over the loom bands to make the tail tighter and tapered.
To finish off your bendy paper and loom band snake craft you’ll need to add some eyes, nostrils and of course a forked tongue. We used googly eyes and made a little red tongue out of tissue paper which we glued into the open roll.
I love how our loom band snake craft turned out. Super cute or what?
As long as you haven’t wrapped your paper and loom band snake too tightly you should be able to bend it into different shapes. Of course because it is only made of paper it won’t last for ever and the tissue paper will rip (Especially if it’s bent into lots of different shapes.) But we really don’t mind because it’s such fun to make them and the loom bands can always be reused to make another snake if the first one gets too worn out!
Please do not leave your children or pets unattended with loom bands, they are a choking hazard.
I hope you have fun with your homemade snakes.
More Fun Crafts To Inspire Imaginative Play:
Bendy Snake Craft
Materials
- Newspaper
- Colourful Tissue Paper
- Loom Bands
- Googly Eyes
- Glue
Instructions
- Start by loosely rolling up a couple of sheets of newspaper. Make your paper roll as long or short and as fat and thin as you like.
- Give your newspaper a bit of a twist and then flatten and fold over one end which you’ll use to make the head.
- Leaving the folded head end poking out, loosely wrap your newspaper snake in a layer of tissue paper. Use a couple of loom bands to secure the tissue paper at either end of the snake’s body.
- To make your homemade snake’s head cut a double thickness of tissue paper approximately 30 cm by 20cm. (We used x2 A4 sheets.) Fold the paper in half lengthways and put the folded newspaper end of your snake into one end.
- Roll the tissue paper round and round the snake’s head and secure it in place with a loom band.
- Now have fun decorating the rest of your snake with loom bands.
- Finish off by adding a paper tongue and googly eyes.