When I shared this alpaca craft that we made in one of my READ + CREATE classes, the Instagram went wild.
We made these alpaca necklaces to celebrate the hilarious book, Alpacas with Maracas, during the week of National Simultaneous Story Time.
Matt Cosgrove’s rollicking, rhyming read was simultaneously read aloud to more than 1 million Aussie children at various locations across Australia at 11am on Wednesday May 22nd. We went to see Matt himself read the book at the State Library.
And there were REAL LIVE alpacas present. No joke. REAL LIVE alpacas at Australia’s oldest library. So good.

Anyhoo, I digress.
It was such a fun craft project, that I thought I’d share the template here for you.
Get yo’ alpaca craft on, people.
They’re the new unicorn, I tells ya.

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What you will need:

Cardboard
Paint
Markers
Glue
Yarn

How to craft up your alpaca:

and trace it onto your cardboard.
We saved some cardboard off cuts from the recycling bin.

I pre-painted the alpacas. The kids could easily paint the alpacas themselves.

We examined the lines and designs in the endpapers of Alpacas with Maracas and used this as inspiration to colour in the saddles.
The kids loved using Sharpies for this step.

Now offer the yarn!
Some of the mini-makers in my READ + CREATE class wrapped the yarn to create a scarf for the alpaca.
One little genius wrapped yarn “socks” for his alpaca.

Want to make a tassel?
Here’s how we did it.

Use a small strip of cardboard.
Lay a length of string or yarn horizontally at the top of the card. This will be the tie of your tassel.
Holding this horizontal piece in place, wrap yarn vertically around the cardboard. The more you wrap, the thicker your tassel will be.
When you are done wrapping, knot the horizontal string/ yarn.
Slide your scissors between the wrapped yarn and card and cut your tassel loose. Trim your tassel to a desired length.
Wrap and tie a shorter piece of string towards the top of your tassel to create a “head” for your tassel.
Tie your tassel onto your alpaca.

Embellish with beads if you so please.

We turned our alpaca craft into necklaces. Just use a hole punch to make a hole in the centre of your alpaca and thread some yarn through.

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