Schools resources
Museum Maker: How to make an owl badge
We’ve teamed up with upcycling experts Ostrero and artist Bryony Knox to create a design for a cool owl badge – made from a fizzy drinks can! Try it out today.
How to make an owl badge
What do you need?
- A helpful adult
- 2 fizzy drinks cans
- Scissors
- Something squishy to rest on (cardboard or folded newspaper)
- A biro pen
- Felt tip pens
- Objects to draw round (e.g spice jars)
- A bowl for scraps
- Bread bag ties or garden wire
- Buttons or beads
- Sticky tape.
Safety check
- Ask an adult to cut out and flatten the can. They can cut out all the tin shapes too
- Cut off any jagged edges or nicks. Round off any pointy corners as these may be sharp
- Put all metal scraps into a bowl and make sure scraps don’t fall on the floor.
Prepare the can
- Cut open and flatten out the cans
- Cut off any nicks or jaggy bits and round off sharp corners.
Make the body
- Use a felt tip pen to draw the shapes onto the tin sheets
- 2 large circles: 1 for the tummy and 1 for the wings
- 2 smaller circles for the ‘eyes’
- 1 triangle shape for the beak
- Get your adult to cut out the shapes.
Make the feathers
- Place the 2 wings and the body shape onto a piece of cardboard or folded newspaper.
- Press ‘V’ shapes onto the wings and body with a biro pen
- Turn the tin over to see how the pattern looks.
Make the eyes
- Place the two smaller ‘eye’ circles onto the squishy card or newspaper
- Punch two holes in the centre of each circle with the biro
- Snip small slits around the edges of each circle.
Join it all together
- You are going to use two buttons to fasten all the pieces together
- Line all the pieces up in this order : buttons/eyes/beak/wings and body
- Mark each piece to show where you need to punch two holes
- Punch holes as marked
- Thread wire through holes in the buttons, eyes/beak/wings and body
- Twist ends of wire at the back of the body to fasten together
- Sellotape a safety pin to the back of the body to make your owl into a badge.
Inspiration from our collections
We have lots more upcycled and recycled objects in our collections like this Tomato Bangle, made by David Poston, which was inspired by food packaging designs.
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