Craftopia Tutorial: How to create a Squid

In the second chapter of HBO’s Craftopia, the contestants had to recreate the face of an animal. We saw how did they create a lion and an elephant (the last one turned into a mammoth in the end)—the most original project consisted of creating a squid. We fell in love with it immediately!

If you’d like to repeat this craft with children, keep reading! We have thought of an alternative method that we are going to share with you. You will just need simple supplies (no glue gun required!). Follow the steps and create your unique version of a squid.

Supplies needed

All the supplies involved in this project are cheap and child-friendly.

• Tissue paper
• Thin yarn -The one we’ve used is 100% Cotton, 50gz
• Small crafting ball
• Scissors

Step-by-step

Start by creating strings with the yarn. Every line must be, at least, 50 centimeters. Don’t worry about cutting the ends – we will do it later in the process.

Create two groups of strings like the one on the image above. Use a small piece of yarn to tie each group in the middle.

Place both groups of yarn in an X position. Look at the example from above for more reference. Tie one group to the other from the middle, once again.

Now, it’s time to cover the ball with the yarns.

Place the ball on top of the point where all the yarns collide. Grab it, as you can see in the example from above. The ball must be completely covered with wool.

Once you have covered the ball with yarn, tie it once again. Make several knots: you must make sure that the ball remains covered.

Now it’s time to cut the borders of the yarn. You will need to work with them as if they were hair. Make sure that you cut all the edges. An excellent way to test if this step is completed is to brush them with your fingers.

Time to make the squid’s head. Grab a squared piece of tissue paper. The borders don’t have to be perfectly cut, because we are going to fold them.

Wrap the paper around the squid’s head (the ball). Tie the paper to the yarn with a small string.

Fold the corners of the paper to get a rectangle shape.

Fold them once again. In this case, you must grab the corners and pull them to the center. You need the paper to have a triangle at the end. Look at the examples of the images above and below.

You need to separate eight different strings of yarn. It’s time to create the squid’s tentacles.

We decided to build each tentacle by making a traditional braid. The braids increase the Kawaii aspect of the craft. Remember to tie them in the end by making a secure knot.

If the endings of the braids look irregular, you can cut the yarns once again. They don’t have to look 100% uniform.

The last step is painting some eyes to your squid.

And it’s done! We hope you have found this tutorial inspiring. If you want to help us to inspire crafters with this easy idea, share this article!