Let’s create our own ancient Egyptian Scarab Pin and learn about the ancient Egyptian Scarab. This craft is great for kids in grade school or older and can be done at home or in the classroom. Children will develop fine motor skills and learn to express creativity by making their own ancient Egyptian Scarab pin. You can use your own handmade ancient Egyptian scarab pin to add to a jacket, backpack, or use for a costume!

Find out some cool history about the ancient Egyptian Scarab at the end of this article!

Ancient egyptian scarab handmade pin

Do you want to make your own ancient Egyptian Scarab pin that you can put on your jacket or backpack? Here’s a super fun guide that teaches you how to make your own ancient Egyptian Scarab pin.

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Supplies needed to make ancient egyptian scarab pin

• White or tan air dry or modeling clay
• Safety pin
• Blue paint, red paint, yellow paint, orange paint
• Paint brushes
• Tinfoil
• Toothpick

how to make your own ancient egyptian scarab pin

Step 1

Gather your materials together. Take a small amount of tinfoil and shape it into a small oval shape. 

Step 2

Take pieces of your clay and smush them into pancakes. Add your clay pancakes to the tinfoil oval, this makes the base of the clay scarab. Make sure to smooth the clay pancakes into each other so there are no seams or cracks. 

Step 3

Take your toothpick and create an indent into the clay about ¼ of the way up the clay. Above the line you created, make an indented semicircle line into the clay.

Step 4

Take a small piece of clay and shape it into a semicircle, add this to your scarab and smooth it into the clay so it stays on.

Step 5

Use your toothpick to make indents into the scarab to create it’s main body and shell.

Step 6

Take a long piece of clay and roll it flat, you can use your hands or a smooth pen to do this. 

Cut the long piece of clay into a semicircle shape and attach it to the back of your scarab pin. Make sure the clay is evenly smoothed in so that the wings don’t pop off. These are the wings of the scarab. 

Step 7

Use your toothpick to add some details to the wings.

Step 8

On the back of your scarab, attach your safety pin horizontally. Take some clay and lay it over the side of the toothpick embedded into the clay.

Step 9

If you’re using air dry clay, let it dry. If you’re using modeling clay, bake it to package instructions.

Step 10

After your clay has dried or baked, paint the body of the scarab blue. Let the paint dry.

Step 11

Paint part of the wings yellow, and the rest red and orange. Let the paint dry.

Step 12

With a lighter or darker paint and a thin brush, you can add some details or shading to the wings and shell of your scarab to make it look shiny. Let the paint dry.

Step 13

Attach your scarab pin to either your shirt, backpack, or jacket and ta-da! Now you have your very own ancient Egyptian Scarab pin!

Finished Ancient egyptian handmade scarab pin

Tips for making your own egyptian scarab pin

• If you don’t have any tooth picks, you can use a safety pin instead.
• To help the paint dry faster, use a hair dryer on low to speed up the process.
• Mix some of your paint together to get darker or lighter shades to help make your scarab pin look more 3D!
• If you have any matte varnish, modge podge, or art sealant add a coat on your pin after all the paints dried. This will help the paint not chip off.

my experience with this craft

I had a super fun time making and coming up with the ancient Egyptian scarab handmade pin craft and I’m very happy with how it turned out. As I’ve said before on my other articles about ancient Egypt, I got my inspiration for this craft from my Ancient Egypt class that I took during the first half of the summer. You can read the paragraph below to find out more about the scarab in Ancient Egypt!

I didn’t end up keeping my scarab pin for myself though, I ended up gifting it to my dad for fathers day. He really liked the gift as ancient Egypt was one of the times in history that he finds to be highly interesting. Perhaps you could do the same and make your pin for a friend or family member? I’m sure they’d love it!

ancient egyptian scarab history for kids

In ancient Egypt the scarab was a common symbol, representing divinity and the sun. Because of its meaning, the scarab became an important symbol for Egypt. Most of the goods that Egypt traded with its neighbors would be marked with the scarab seal to legitimize the trade goods as Egyptian. 

Scarab seals are also one of the most abundant resources that archeologists and historians have of ancient Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period. The seals have helped archaeologists figure out the extent of Egypt’s influence and which or their neighbors they interacted with the most.

Sourced from A History of Ancient Egypt by Marc Van Mieroop.

If you want to learn more about ancient Egyptian history and their views on the after life, here is a fun video by TED-Ed!

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How did your ancient Egyptian Scarab pin turn out? Let us know in the comments!