Crafts to Make with Paper Bags

There are so many fun crafts you can make with paper bags, which is a good thing because paper lunch bags come in a huge pack so if you’re not using them for lunches you’ll hang onto them forever (ask me how I know). Check out these fun crafts to make with paper bags.

Of course there are tons of options when it comes to making paper bag puppets out of lunch sized paper bags. Kids will have fun designing their own if you give them construction paper, markers, feathers, googly eyes, etc., but you can also make particular animals if you like.

To name just a few:

Dragon (Moms and Crafters) includes a free template
Octopus (Kids Activities Blog) also uses newspaper for bonus upcycling
Cow (Simple Everyday Mom) includes a free template
Sea otter (Buggy and Buddy) includes a free template
Squirrel (Crafts by Amanda) includes a free template
Butterfly (I Heart Crafty Things) you could use coffee filters if you don’t have doilies for the wings
Turkey (Journey to SAHM) a classic
Owl (Kids Activity Zone)
Platypus (Tina’s Dynamic Homeschool+) this post includes other Australian animal crafts and picture books to read if you’re doing an Australia unit

I also have a small paper bag journal over on my blog that kids and adults alike can use. These are fun to make for treasure hunts or use as a travel journal for your next vacation since the pockets can hold little treasures.

Use a bigger bag to make a pretend play satchel and treasure map like this one from Buggy and Buddy. That would be another fun way to do a treasure hunt in the house or yard, or let the kids draw their own maps as they explore.

And if your kiddo is always bringing you flowers from the yard, you can make a paper bag display to hold plain glass or mason jar vases like this one from Cleverly Inspired. Hers has a red, white and blue theme but kids could decorate them in all sorts of ways.

Growing Up Ladybug and How to Become a Butterfly are both by Stepanka Sekaninova and illustrated by Linh Dao, and they came out at the same time and are on similar themes, so let’s look at them together.

Growing Up Ladybug is narrated by Mariella, a seven-spot ladybug. She talks about the parts of a ladybug, where they live, different kinds of ladybugs, why humans love them, their defenses against predators and the life cycle of a ladybug.

The drawings are cute if not always scientifically accurate, it’s not in such a way that’s likely to confuse kids (who probably already know that ladybug mamas don’t push their larval babies around in strollers, for instance.

It’s a good general description of the life cycle of a lady bug and why we like having them around.

About the book: 32 pages, hardcover. Published 2026 by Albatross Media. Suggested retail price $16.95.

Similarly, How to Become a Butterfly covers the life cycle of a butterfly, starting with caterpillars eating burning nettle leaves. (Here Amanda is the narrator.) The book talks about a few of the more than 18,000 daytime butterflies in the world as well as other creatures that live in the meadow (there’s that ladybug again, along with crickets, bees and other bugs).

It also covers some of the enemies of caterpillars like wasps and spiders, and the defenses that caterpillars use to try to prevent being eaten. It illustrates how caterpillars grow and change as they molt and prepare to pupate, and what a caterpillar looks like before and while it is forming its chrysalis. And while the book uses the word metamorphasis it doesn’t really talk about what happens between the caterpillar forming a chrysalis and the butterfly hatching.

This butterfly is a peacock butterfly, and once it hatches the book covers the parts of a butterfly and the life cycle. It also talks about nocturnal moths (though it says nocturnal butterflies are “usually called moths” when moths are actually a different species) and what butterflies do at night.

I’m maybe a little hard on this book because my daughter is a butterfly expert from way back, but it is still cute and good for the very basic basics of the butterfly life cycle.

Both books would be fun additions to your bookshelf for younger kids starting to learn about different animals or who have an interest in insects.

About the book: 32 pages, hardcover. Published 2026 by Albatross Media. Suggested retail price $16.95.

Have you read?

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