We spotted this adorable idea for animal “portraits” on artist Nylah Khan’s Instagram, and had to try our hand at the craft. Bonus points: I found Easter decorations that came in an egg carton, meaning there was no need to purchase a chicken’s egg carton.

I cut apart the segments of the carton and each one could now be the face of a separate animal. Paint accordingly! You can plan ahead and choose your colors (i.e. pink for pigs), or just let your child choose the colors and see what animals match up. We ended up with one pink face and one yellow.

I used hot glue to secure these segments to a rectangle of cardboard as a background. Now paint on more features! If you want to get silly, add a human body for the animal. My “pig” was wearing a pink suit and blue tie, as an example for Veronika to follow.

Veronika loved painting features on the yellow one, telling me she was adding eyes and more. I let her painting dictate the direction this particular creature went.

A long streak of yellow paint made it look like a giraffe!

Once the paint dried, we hung these up for an art gallery in the playroom. I loved that one of these creations was purely a toddler’s, while the other hewed closer to Khan’s original portrait idea.

What animals will your child make? Please share in the comments!