Easy Leprechaun Craft with Popsicle Sticks

Kids will have so much fun making this easy leprechaun craft with just some popsicle sticks, paper, and paint! This leprechaun hat craft is a fun way to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with not a lot of prep or money, an easy craft for any age!

We love St. Patrick’s Day in our house! Normally we just play St. Patrick’s Day games like St. Patrick’s Day bingo and do a St. Patrick’s Day scavenger hunt.

But this year I thought getting crafty would be a great way to get the kids in the magical mood!

I printed out these leprechaun coloring pages, we made a colorful leprechaun trap, and we made leprechaun hats out of popsicle sticks.

I always have people asking me for more fun craft ideas, so I figured I would share this simple leprechaun paper craft that’s perfect for Saint Patrick’s Day!

Why You’ll Love This Craft

• Easy – making this cute green hat craft just takes paper, paint, and craft sticks. That’s it! Way easier than this pot of gold craft. It’s also a great way to work on fine motor skills with cutting, painting, and gluing!
• Inexpensive – you likely already have most of the supplies for this craft at home and if you don’t, it’s easy to buy them at your local craft store for cheap. Or buy things like popsicle sticks in bulk and save them to make other popsicle stick crafts like this vampire craft or this penguin craft.
• Fast – if your kids are anything like mine, they don’t like to do anything for too long. This cute leprechaun craft will keep their attention for the short amount of time it takes to complete it, without them getting bored when it takes too long. And kids will love their little leprechaun’s hat when it’s done!

Craft Supplies

Supply Notes

• Construction paper – you can really use any kind of colored paper you want – construction paper, card stock, even paper bags or paper plates if you really wanted to and had some leftover. You’ll just need enough for each of these simple leprechaun crafts to cut a black strip and a small yellow box. You’ll need one piece of black construction paper and one piece of yellow construction paper.
• Craft sticks – I recommend using the thicker jumbo ones like these instead of the smaller, thinner ones.
• Tape – while I used small pieces of double-sided tape to make these as easy as possible (and quicker to make), you could also replace the tape with glue as well.
• Paint – if you’re doing this with older kids who won’t get the paint all over themselves, craft paint is great. If you’re doing this with younger kids, always go with something washable like these Crayola Washable paints. It doesn’t matter how cute the St. Patty’s Day craft is if you ruined your kids clothes with paint!
• Paint brush – since you’re working with smaller craft sticks, I recommend using a smaller paint brush. If you use a larger one or one with thicker bristles, you’ll end up with more paint on the table than on the craft sticks.

How to make This Leprechaun Craft

This easy leprechaun craft is really as easy as 1-2-3-4. When I said it was easy, I wasn’t kidding. You can probably look at the pictures above or the ones I share on social media and figure it out on your own but just in case, here’s how to make these St. Patrick’s Day crafts!

1. Paint four craft sticks green and let them dry.
2. Line up the four craft sticks tightly together. Cut the remaining craft stick in half and tape (or glue) to the back of the painted sticks, one toward the top and one toward the bottom, just like I did with this witch popsicle stick craft.
3. Cut a strip of the black paper. Then cut a small rectangle out of the yellow paper, then cut a smaller rectangle out of the center of that rectangle to create the gold buckle.
4. Then tape or glue those paper leprechaun pieces to the bottom of the leprechaun popsicle sticks to finish this adorable craft off.

And that’s really it. I told you it was an easy St. Patrick’s Day craft! This was easily my boys’ favorite thing we did for our early St. Patrick’s Day celebration this year, and I hope it’s a big hit with your kids too!

Expert Tips

Cut the craft stick in half instead of trying to break it. Talking from experience, popsicle sticks often don’t break in half like you want them to, and it’ll be no good to you if one piece is really small and one piece is long.

Make sure to give the craft sticks ample time to dry before you tape or glue on top of them. Taping to wet paint is a great way to ruin these adorable leprechaun crafts! Want this craft to take more time for your kids? Have them paint both sides of the craft sticks.

Craft FAQs

More St. Patrick’s Day Fun

If you need more St. Patrick’s Day ideas to go along with this lucky leprechaun craft, try out one of these fun activities!

• Leprechaun hunt – after you make this easy paper leprechaun craft, give kids this leprechaun hunt to go in hunt of things a leprechaun might have left behind!
• St. Patrick’s Day word search – a free printable word search, great for downtime between activities or just some St. Patrick’s Day fun!
• St. Patrick’s Day i Spy – a printable i spy page with all sorts of fun St. Patrick’s Day images and characters to find!
• St. Patrick’s Day would you rather – tons of fun would you rather questions about pots of gold, Irish folklore, and more! One of the best ideas for a group that has kids and adults!
• St. Patrick’s Day charades – tons of St. Patrick’s Day words perfect for a rousing game of charades or pictionary!