Painted Cupcake Liner Poppy Craft

Last updated on November 11, 2020

This Painted Cupcake Liner Poppy Craft is an easy craft for toddlers and preschoolers to make for Remembrance Day or Anzac Day.

As you’ve likely noticed, the toddlers and preschoolers here in my daycare have been busy making easy poppy crafts for Remembrance Day, which falls on November 11th.

We’ve made quite an assortment of simple poppy crafts using common supplies that you’d find around your home: egg cartons, paper plates, tissue paper, coffee filters, crepe paper etc. Most recently, we made these painted cupcake liner poppies.

Cupcake Liner Poppy Craft - Happy Hooligans
I hope you’ll keep these in mind if you’re looking for a quick and easy Remembrance Day craft to make with the children or students in your home, daycare or preschool classroom.

To make our Painted Muffin Liner Poppy Craft, you’ll need:

Supplies

plain cupcake liners (2 per poppy)
black buttons (1 per poppy)
green pipe cleaners (1 per poppy)
red paint
hair dryer (optional)

How to Make a Cupcake Liner Poppy

To start, have your child paint their cupcake liners. We did two liners per poppy, and that worked well. We only painted one side of our muffin liners.

preschooler painting a cupcake liner

We dried our cupcake liners quickly with a blast from a hair-dryer. Much like when I dried our painted coffee filter poppies, I held the cupcake liner in the palm of my hand, and blasted the air down into it. That blast of air forced the liners into a cup-shape as they dried.

When the liners were dry, we layered 2 together, and chose a button for the centre of the poppy.

red painted cupcake liners and black buttons
You’re going to need to poke a couple of holes through the cupcake liners and those holes will need to roughly match up to your button holes. To do this, I just held the two cupcake liners together and poked a pencil through both layers.

Then the hooligans threaded a green pipe cleaner up through the cupcake liners. Poke it through the back, and come out through the front.

preschooler putting pipe cleaner stem and black button on poppy craft

Next, slip a button onto the pipe cleaner. This is a great little fine motor exercise. It’s tricky for little ones, but give them a chance to try and do it themselves without jumping in to quickly to assist them.

preschooler making a poppy with a cupcake liner and button

I know it’s difficult to stand back and watch them struggle with a fine motor task like this, but they’ll experience a real sense of accomplishment if they do it without your help.

When the button has been threaded onto the pipe cleaner and pushed into place in the centre of the poppy, have them bend the pipe cleaner and thread it back down through the other button hole, and back through the cupcake liners.

3 poppies made out of painted cupcake liners