Sunshine girl asked for flamingo decorations for her birthday party this year. Our walls are scattered with a flock of flamingos and I’m going to share with you a free set of printable templates to make your own flock.

FIVE. How can we be celebrating her fifth birthday already?

A flamingo theme isn’t surprising, since sunshine girl’s bedroom is decorated with ballerinas and flamingos. Plus, we did the ballerina birthday party and cake for her 3rd birthday.

You guys, sunshine girl loves flamingos. Some kids are fickle on favorite colors and animals – not sunshine girl! Everywhere we’ve gone – Sea World, Animal Kingdom, and any zoo – flamingos are what she gets excited to see.
Hands down. She’s all about pink.

Initially, I planned to buy decorations but couldn’t find what I had in mind. After some thought, decided to attempt making my own paper decorations.

By party day, our walls were scattered with a flock of flamingos cut and taped together from cardstock.

I need to be honest. I’m no artist. Coming up with templates for these flamingos took some serious time and effort – as in a whole bunch of trial and error (and paper scraps).

After several failures that looked NOTHING like flamingos, I cut one out and texted a photo to my mom and a friend.

After they confirmed it looked like a flamingo, I finally had a template.

With a template, cutting out an entire flock from 5 shades of pink cardstock was a quick process.

Today, I’m going to save you the headache of making templates by offering mine as free PDF printables! To create a similar look, you will need the templates, scissors, tape, various shades of pink cardstock (or other paper) and some aqua crepe paper.

Inexpensive. Pretty. Pink.

Ok. Now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s talk DIY flamingos.

DIY Flamingo Party Decorations

None of the flamingo decorations look the same. Their legs were taped in different positions, and there are 3 neck styles. Otherwise, the body and beaks are the same shape, just varying the colors.

Templates

For one flamingo, cut ONE of Template 1 and 2 and pick ONE of Template 3 (a, b or c). 

• Template 1: DIY Pink Flamingo Lower Body Legs Feet and Knees
• Template 2: DIY Pink Flamingo Upper Body and Beak

Template 3:

• DIY Pink Flamingo Neck Template 3a
• DIY Pink Flamingo Neck Template 3b
• DIY Pink Flamingo Neck Template 3c

Cut Out A Variety Of Colors

Vary the colors as you cut – the more you make, the more color variation you can have. For example: if using 5 shades of pink cardstock, cut 3 of each template per color to make 15 flamingos.

Cutting things out does take some time to sit down and just do it. It’s a good idea to cut and assemble the flamingos a few days ahead of time, even if they don’t go on the wall right away. No one wants to do everything the day before while prepping food and cleaning.

So, put your feet up and watch TV, or, even better, grab coffee and a friend to help. Spend some time catching up while you cut and have a little fun while you assemble them.

Assemble Each Flamingo

Once everything is cut out, you’re ready to assemble each individual flamingo. Start with the bodies, necks and beaks and stick them together with tape – it is easiest to put the tape on the back so you won’t see it when they’re on the wall. Then add legs in varying positions.

If you are a rule-follower like me, making them all unique may be a challenge.

I asked my mom to come help make them all different. She suggested laying them all out side-by-side as we put the legs on, and that really helped. If you feel like you’re stuck, check out our ‘flock’ for some more ideas.

Create The Flock

Once assembled, use painter’s tape to attach them to the wall while protecting your paint. The twisted crepe paper to create the ‘water’ below the flamingos added some color, but also served as a guide for height and helped the process go faster.

Our flamingos were placed in intentionally ‘random’ order and spacing. I’m so grateful my mom is capable of not placing them in equally spaced distances – I am terrible at randomly doing anything.

After creating our flock, the birthday theme finishing touches were a birthday photo banner and a homemade cake topped with its own tiny flock of flamingos.

Who in your life would love a flamingo party?