Simple Papercraft Toys & Automata for Kids (and Adults)

Color it, cut it, fold it, and then (the best part) watch it move. Paper toys are art that does an awesome dance.

Some of the most magical toys you’ll ever make are just paper, a few folds, and some crayons or paint. No batteries, no app, no tiny plastic pieces waiting to be stepped on at 2 a.m. Just something you make, decorate however you want, then bring to life with a pull or a spin.

These are called paper automata (fancy word, very simple idea): paper toys that move. Pull a tab and a shark opens its mouth. Spin a wheel and the colors swirl. Turn a little handle and a bird bobs up and down like it’s saying hello. You draw it, you color it, you build it and then it moves, which never stops being delightful no matter how old you are.

They’re perfect for making together. Kids handle the fun part (the coloring, the decorating, the gleeful testing); grown-ups handle the craft knife and try to keep the decorating contained to only the table. Let’s make some.

The Best Part: You Make It Yours

Before we get to the mechanisms, the thing that makes these special: a paper toy is a blank canvas that happens to move. The mechanism is maybe ten minutes of folding and cutting. The art is the rest of the afternoon.

Every toy here is an excuse to draw, paint, collage, and decorate. That mouth that opens? It can be a shark, a dragon, a grumpy hippo, or a monster with googly eyes (we fully endorse using googly eyes as much as possible). The wheel that spins? Cover it in stickers, glitter, marker scribbles, tiny painted planets. This is where kids especially light up. They don’t care that it’s clever, they care that it’s theirs, covered in their colors and their weird brilliant ideas.

So grab the crayons, the markers, the paint, the glue, the googly eyes, the sequins, the whole joyful mess. The moving part is the magic trick. The decorating is the art. You want both.

While the kids are gleefully making a paper frog that sticks its tongue out, they’re also soaking up how things move. Push here, something happens there. They think they’re playing. They’re also quietly figuring out how the world works. Don’t tell them (we promise to keep that secret between us).

Pull-Tabs: The Perfect First One

If you’ve never made a moving toy, start here. Pull-tabs are so simple a kid can mostly build one themselves, and so satisfying that adults keep sneaking a turn.

Here’s the idea: you draw an image on a strip of paper, slide that strip through two little slits in your main page, and now you can pull it back and forth to make things happen. A rocket blasts up into the sky. A mouth chomps open and shut. A race car zooms across the page. A flower pops into bloom. All from tugging one paper strip. It feels like magic, and for a four-year-old it basically is.

This is a great project to make together: the grown-up cuts the two slits, plus the strip, and the kid does everything else, drawing the rocket, coloring the sky, decorating the tab, and testing it approximately four hundred times.

Make it: a pull-tab rocket launch

You’ll need: a sheet of cardstock, a strip of cardstock about 1 inch wide, a craft knife (grown-up), and something to color with (choose your own adventure medium).

1. Draw your scene on the cardstock. A sky, some clouds, maybe a launchpad at the bottom. Leave a clear vertical path up the middle where the rocket will travel.
2. Adults, cut two small horizontal slits along that path, one near the bottom and one a few inches up, each a little wider than your paper strip.
3. Draw and color a rocket on the end of your paper strip, then cut around the top so the rocket shape pokes up.
4. Thread the strip up through the bottom slit and out the top slit, so the rocket sits on the front and the long tail hangs out the bottom to hold.
5. Pull the tail down and push it up — and watch your rocket blast off. 🚀

Want to make it fancier? Cut the slits on a slant so the rocket climbs as it flies. Hide the tab behind a cloud so the movement looks like pure magic. Add a second tab so two things move at once. Simple to start, endless to explore.

Spinners & Wheels: Round Things That Twirl

Next up: a thing that spins. Pin a paper disc through the center with a brass fastener and it turns freely, suddenly you’ve got a whole category of toys, most of which are really just excuses to decorate a circle.

Make a spinner game with a pointer and hand-drawn sections, a “what should we do today?” wheel, or a wheel with a little window that reveals a different silly face as it turns. Or our personal fave, a color wheel—paint each wedge, then spin it fast and watch the colors blur into brand-new ones.

And then there’s the two-hundred-year-old classic that still wows every kid who tries it: the thaumatrope. Draw a bird on one side of a small disc and an empty cage on the other, then spin it fast and the bird appears to pop inside the cage. Two drawings, one circle, and your eyes do the rest. It’s the great-great-grandparent of cartoons, and it’s built from a single piece of paper and pure wonder.

Make it: a bird-in-a-cage thaumatrope

You’ll need: cardstock, a circle to trace (a cup or roll of tape works), scissors, a hole punch, two short pieces of string, and something to draw with.

1. Cut two matching circles of cardstock, about 3 inches across (two pieces makes it sturdy).
2. On one side, draw an empty birdcage. On the other side, draw a bird — but draw it upside down relative to the cage. (This is the secret! When the disc flips, the upside-down side lands right-side up.)
3. Glue the discs together and allow it to dry.
4. Punch a small hole on the left and right edges of the disc, straight across from each other.
5. Tie a short loop of string through each hole.
6. Twirl the strings between your fingers to spin the disc fast — and watch the bird hop into its cage. 🐦

Fold-and-Go: Animation with Two Pictures

You don’t need a screen to make a cartoon, you need two drawings and a clever fold.

The simplest is the lift-the-flap: a little paper flap glued over part of your drawing, hinged on one edge so it lifts like a tiny door to reveal a surprise underneath. A closed mouth lifts to reveal a big open grin. A plain egg lifts to reveal a very smug little chick. A closed box lifts to reveal what’s inside. It’s a two-picture animation you can hold in your hand, and it’s about as easy as gluing one edge of a paper scrap.

Make it: a chomping monster lift-the-flap

You’ll need: a piece of cardstock for the base, a smaller scrap of cardstock for the flap, a glue stick, and something to color with.

1. Draw your monster’s face on the base page — but give it a big wide-open mouth, full of teeth. This is the “surprise” hiding underneath, so make it fun.
2. Cut a small strip from your cardstock, just big enough to cover the open mouth.
3. On that flap, draw the closed mouth — a simple smile or a straight line — so it matches up with the monster’s face.
4. Glue the flap down along one edge only (just a thin line of glue on the top edge), so it covers the open mouth but can still lift up like a tiny door. Leave the rest of the flap unglued.
5. Lift the flap and the monster opens its mouth — close it and the mouth is shut again.

The flap is a little door, and the surprise is drawn on the page underneath. Once kids get it, they’ll want to add lift-the-flaps everywhere. Hidden eyes, secret snacks, a whole surprise zoo.

What You’ll Need (Not Much!)

The best part is how little this takes. Cardstock or medium-weight paper is your star, regular printer paper is too floppy and the mechanisms flop right along with it, so you want something with a bit of backbone. Brass paper fasteners are the little heroes that let anything spin or swing. A craft knife and cutting mat handle the cuts, while scissors, glue, and tape handle the rest. A bone folder makes crisp folds, though the back of a spoon works in a pinch.

And then the fun pile: crayons, markers, paint, stickers, googly eyes, glitter, scrap paper for collage, whatever makes your toy yours. With a few sheets of cardstock, some brass fasteners, and a fistful of art supplies you’ll get a joyful afternoon, which might be the best deal in the craft world.

Come Make Something That Moves With Us

We stock the good cardstock, brass fasteners in every size, kid-safe scissors and grown-up blades, cutting mats, bone folders, and every color of marker, paint, sticker, and decorative paper to make your creations as gorgeous as they are clever. And we adore this stuff, tell us what you want to make move (a chomping shark? a waving robot? a whole paper zoo?), and we’ll help you build it.

Want to make a piece of paper get up and dance? Come visit us. We’ll help you grab the right cardstock, the brass fasteners that make it pivot, and all the markers, paint, and stickers to decorate it. Whether it’s a chomping shark, a spinning color wheel, or a waving paper robot. Bring the kids, bring your curiosity, bring your best silly ideas. As always, tag us on Instagram to share your creations!