Animal pencil pots

Make a farmyard full of fun animal pencil pots! Craft a cute piggy in pink felt or make a cheery cow or woolly sheep. These pots are great for storing pens pencils, scissors and rulers and look fab on your desk too, soon all your friends will want one!

You will need:
One H2 empty plastic bottle for each pot
Coloured felt
Black foam
Thick card
Wadding or stuffing
Pink pipe cleaner
White correction pen
All purpose glue
Double sided tape
Scissors
Pencil
Felt tip pen
Wooden spoon

Click to open Pen Pot Patterns

1
Print out the Animal Pen Pot Patterns from this web page, cut out all the pattern pieces you need for the pig and draw around them onto the colour of felt you would like to use. Cut out all your pieces.

2
Use a ruler and a felt tip pen to mark a line around your bottle at the height it needs to be cut. The pig is 8cm high, for the cow cut 12cm high, and the sheep cut 10cm high.
WARNING: Get an adult to cut down your bottles to the correct height using a sharp pointed pair of scissors.

3
Place a strip of double sided tape down the back of the cut bottle and around the base. Also place tape along one of the long edges of the large piece of pink felt. Remove the backing on the tape and wrap the piece of pink felt around the bottle so that the taped edge hangs over, on the inside at the top. Press onto the tape to stick, fold over the top edge and stick inside the bottle.

4
Cut out a piece of wadding the same size at the thick card. Place the head piece of felt on the table, then the wadding, then the card on top. Apply glue all around the edge of the card and the felt. Leave until it is tacky, then pull the felt edges up and stick onto the card. Hold until the glue dries.

5
Place a line of glue along the base of the ear and fold one third over from one side, then the other third over on top, to make a folded ear shape. Cut two small circles of black foam for the eyes, draw a tiny white dot on each using a correction pen. Use double sided tape or glue to stick the nose, nostrils, eyes, ears and flowers into position. Glue the head backing in place on the back of the head.

6
Curl a pink pipe cleaner around a wooden spoon handle and pull off. Glue this onto the back of the covered pencil pot.

7
Glue the head into position on the side of the covered pen pot body. Glue another couple of flowers near the base of the pot for decoration.

Other ideas
Make cow and sheep pencil pots in a similar way. For the sheep use white fur fabric to cover the pot and for it's woolly hair. Add felt flowers with a green pipe cleaner stem to the pot for decoration. For the cow, cut out black wobbly patches to stick to the body and head, add a felt tail and a flower with a pipe cleaner stem in it's mouth!