How to make a Jurassic dinosaur Easter egg

Darrell Wakelam creates sculptures and models from cardboard and recycled bits and piece, we asked him to create a dinosaur Easter egg inspired by Dorset's Jurassic Coast

Here’s a little ‘making’ project to keep your kids busy this Easter... not the usual ‘chick’ but a baby dinosaur.

You will need a pair of scissors and some tape, a bit of glue, an egg box, some scrap paper, cardboard (a cereal box is fine) and some paints to finish it off.

Dinosaurs come in all shapes and sizes so you could make a completely different species to the one you see here, it could have a long neck, horns, feathers, or a spiky tail...and as for colours, that’s up to you!

Great British Life: Step 1: cutting out the head Step 1: cutting out the head (Image: Darrell Wakelam)

1 Cut this shape from the middle of the egg box, don’t worry if it’s a little rough around the edges. This is the shape for the baby dinosaur’s head.

Great British Life: Step 2: Creating the lower jaw Step 2: Creating the lower jaw (Image: Darrell Wakelam)

2 Cut the ‘cone’ head shape in half and reattach this so that the mouth is open. Cut another cone shape from the box for the body.

Great British Life: Step 3: Adding the tail and body Step 3: Adding the tail and body (Image: Darrell Wakelam)

3 Open out the body shape and attach it to a card background, tape the head to the body and use another piece of the box to make a tail.

Great British Life: Step 4: Cutting out the claws Step 4: Cutting out the claws (Image: Darrell Wakelam)

4 Use left-over pieces of the egg box to make some front legs and claws.

Great British Life: Step 5: Making the egg shape Step 5: Making the egg shape (Image: Darrell Wakelam)

Great British Life: Fold the slits down to create a 3D egg shape Fold the slits down to create a 3D egg shape (Image: Darrell Wakelam)

Great British Life: Cut along the top of the half egg shape to make it look likes its broken open Cut along the top of the half egg shape to make it look likes its broken open (Image: Darrell Wakelam)

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5 To make the broken egg, cut a semi-circle out of thin card. Cut slits around the curved edge and pull these slits together to make the egg shape ‘pop’ out. Chop pieces out of the top edge so that it looks ‘cracked’, you can keep these pieces and glue them to the ‘floor’ of the model to look like broken pieces of the egg.

Great British Life: Step 6: Add your dinosaur to the half egg shape and add some broken bits of shell to the base Step 6: Add your dinosaur to the half egg shape and add some broken bits of shell to the base (Image: Darrell Wakelam)

6 Attach the egg and the broken pieces to the base.

Great British Life: Step 7: Add the dinosaur teeth Step 7: Add the dinosaur teeth (Image: Darrell Wakelam)

7 Cut out a small strip of teeth and glue these into the mouth.

8 You can paint straight away, but I have used a bit of glue and ripped up scrap paper to cover over some of the masking tape and to make the model stronger.

9 Once dry you can paint your baby dinosaur and the egg too, you can even paint a different colour on the background! Let your imagination run wild...

Great British Life: Darrell Wakelam with some of his cardboard sculptures made our of recycled bits and pieces Darrell Wakelam with some of his cardboard sculptures made our of recycled bits and pieces (Image: RichardBudd.co.uk)