Upcycled Craft: Yogurt Bottle Snowmen

Yahoo! We’ve finally received the snow we’ve all been waiting for, and the kids are finally able to get back to doing all of their favourite winter activities like sledding, building snow forts and making snowmen. Until this past weekend, the sun has been shining and the grass was green — the only snowflakes in sight were the ones we were making at the craft table.

We’ve been making all kinds of winter crafts, and along with our snowflake ones, we’ve made a few snowmen crafts as well. These yogurt bottle snowmen were a big hit with the hooligans.

We love making upcycled and recycled crafts here. It keeps our crafting costs down, and it’s a great way to teach the children about extending the life of certain objects and materials, rather than throwing them in the trash.

I’ve been stashing our yogurt bottles for months, instead of throwing them out, because every time I look at one, I think “that would make a perfect snowman."

You'll Also Love: DIY Mason Jar Snow Globes

These snowmen can be used in a variety of ways in your home or classroom. The children can use them for play, or you can create a winter village scene on a table or a mantel. You could even turn these snowmen into Christmas tree ornaments or a garland by adding yarn or twine to the project.

To make our yogurt bottle snowmen, we used:

• yogurt bottles (rinsed and dried)
• black acrylic craft paint
• paintbrush
• scissors
• googly eyes
• orange craft foam
• black marker
• fabric scraps or felt
• buttons
• low-heat glue gun

We started by painting the lids of our yogurt bottles. A coat or two of black paint transformed the lids into perfect hats for our snowmen.

While we were waiting for our lids to dry, the kids looked through our fabric scraps, and cut long “scarves” out of the fabric they selected.

We found that the best fabrics to use for the scarves were felt, fleece and flannel because they have a bit of weight to them, and there’s not a noticeable difference between the front side and the back side.

You'll Also Love: Giant Christmas Light Suncatchers

The kids also cut their “carrot noses” out of a piece of orange craft foam.

When the snowman hats were dry, the kids added the snowmens’ scarves. Some tied their scarves on, and some used our low-heat glue guns to secure them in place.

Then the glue guns were used to apply the googly eyes and carrot noses.

Some of the kids also cut up small pieces of white fluffy yarn, and glued those to their snowman’s hat to make it look like it had been dusted with snow.

Colourful buttons glued down the front of each snowman added the finishing touch.