Snippets of Craft: Bringing Stories to Life with Handmade Props

Croeso – Welcome back to my Snippets of Craft series! As promised, in this installment, I’m crafting DIY story props, bringing stories to life for little ones. Discover how you can capture your little one’s imagination with just a few simple materials.

Crafting DIY Story Props for Children’s Book Favourites

We seem to have a good theme going on with our recent book choices here. Food seems to feature, a lot – Especially in one one of our first book choices – The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. I made my first story props to go with my little one’s costume for World Book Day. They are easy to make and cost next to nothing so great if you’re trying to look after the pennies. They’ve brought stories to life for my little ones and they’ve captured their interest in the stories. My 3 year old has been using them for imaginative play too, using them to act out little scenes from from the book. Our first set of props, shown below, represent the various foods that the caterpillar munches through.

An open book - The Hungry Caterpillar, placed on a table surrounded by DIY crafted props of food featured in the book.

What you’ll need

  • Cardboard – cereal packaging works well but any sturdy cardboard will work
  • Pencil
  • Paints – I used acrylic
  • Paintbrushes of various sizes
  • Scissors or a craft knife

Optional

  • Paint pens, markers or colour pencils
Pencil outline drawings of different food items on the back of an opened cardboard cereal box.

Step 1 – Sketch the Shapes: Draw the outlines of the different props onto the cardboard. They don’t have to be perfect, mine certainly aren’t!

Step 2 – Paint the props: I used acrylic paints as that’s what I had in. I added some different colour shades at this stage too so that I could easily blend them where needed.

hand painted drawings of different food items on the back of a cereal box. A tube of red coloured acrylic paint can be seen to the side with a pair of black handles scissor.
A close up of a hand painted salami on the back of a cereal box.

Step 3 – Add details: once the base colours have dried you can add the details to help bring your props to life. You could also use paint pens, coloured pencils or even markers depending on the style you’re going for.

Step 4 – Cut Out the Shapes: Carefully cut along the outlines to create your shaped props. A craft knife would probably be easier to use on the little fiddly bits here.

The Hungry Caterpillar book laid open on a wooden table surrounded by handmade, hand painted cardboard props of all the food featured in the book.

Tips:

  • Involve your little ones in the painting for a fun, rainy day activity.
  • Use your props to create little story themed games. My little one loved matching up the food props up with the illustrations in the book.
  • Make your own storage bags for your props. I’ve decorated a used envelope and cellophane folders to create one.

I’d love to see your creations! Share your storybook props using the hashtag #SnippetsOfCraft and tag me on Instagram @ourlittlesnippets.

This was our outfit for World Book Day this year. Tiger Who Came to Tea by Judith Kerr themed costume complete with handmade props and storage bag!

A child in a Tiger Who Came to Tea themed outfit with handmade DIY props of food and crockery items all stored in a handmade reused carboard envelope. The bag has been decorated and covered with colourful paper tapes from Babipur.

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