Handmade decoration ideas for summer festivals
A summer festival packed with fun attractions like food stalls, drums, and Bon Odori dancing.
Many people, from children to adults, look forward to summer festivals.
In this article, we’ll introduce handmade decoration ideas you can use for summer festivals.
These ideas are perfect not only for festivals held at nurseries, kindergartens, and senior care facilities, but also for families planning a home fair.
They’re easy to make, so create plenty of decorations and recreate the lively festival atmosphere!
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[Summer Festival] Handmade Decoration Ideas (11–20)
portable Shinto shrine (omikoshi)
Why not incorporate a mikoshi—an icon of summer festivals—into your decorations? Here’s a lightweight, compact mikoshi made from cardboard that kids can easily carry.
Attach a piece of folded cardstock to the top of the main cardboard body to resemble a triangular roof.
Decorate the cardboard and cardstock with colors and patterns to match a mikoshi.
Thread carrying poles—made by wrapping garden stakes with newspaper and colored tape—through the mikoshi, add some floral decorations, and it’s done! It’s a great idea for summer festival decor and mikoshi events with children.
Watermelon garland
Let’s make a garland inspired by a classic taste of summer: watermelon! There are many ways to create watermelons—cut construction paper into watermelon shapes, fold watermelons from origami, or, if you want a bit of dimension, make watermelons with paper fans.
Not just red—orange, yellow, and rind green are also great motifs.
Combining watermelons in various colors into a garland will make it more festive than using red alone.
Liven up your summer festival with a delicious-looking watermelon garland!
goldfish lantern
Why not add a festive touch with adorable goldfish-shaped lanterns? If you want to make a round, lantern-like goldfish, we recommend using disposable bowl containers sold at 100-yen shops.
Join the rims of two bowls together to form a round goldfish.
Then paint it, make fins from construction paper, and attach them.
Finish by adding a string, and it’s done! Another idea is to draw eyes and a mouth on an inflated balloon, add fins, and hang it like a lantern.
Since these tend to turn out a bit large, try using them as an accent among your other decorations.
goldfish ornament
At summer festivals and temple fairs, you often come across goldfish scooping stalls.
Goldfish swaying as they swim through the water are dazzling in real life, and they also make perfect motifs for decorations.
This is a decoration inspired by the underwater world where such goldfish live.
Use light blue construction paper as the base, then arrange motifs like goldfish and aquatic plants on it.
Once the whole piece is finished, place it in a clear bag and tie it with a ribbon to complete it.
Using a transparent bag is an important touch, as it conveys the shimmer of water and a soft, gentle atmosphere.
Handmade mask
One of the highlights that draws attention at summer festival stalls is the masks.
Just displaying masks of various characters is enough to get kids excited.
So why not incorporate mask ideas into your summer festival decorations? For the headband part, cut thick paper into a long, narrow strip and connect both ends with a rubber band.
For the mask itself, try making it with colored construction paper.
Decorate the walls with character masks kids love, like Anpanman, Pikachu, Mario, and Hello Kitty!
Ramune
Shaved ice and ice cream are great, but for many people, nothing beats ramune during the hot summer.
Let’s make decorations inspired by ramune, like the ones you see at summer festival stalls.
You can fold that distinctively shaped bottle with origami or cut it out of construction paper—choose whichever method you like.
To capture ramune’s fizzy feel, it’s a good idea to lightly add color or bubbles to the bottle you make.
You can also try making the can-type ramune, not just the bottle.
[Summer Festival] Handmade Decoration Ideas (21–30)
spiral ornament
Here are two ideas for spiral decorations you can make with origami paper.
The first is a teardrop-shaped ornament.
Cut the origami into six narrow strips and keep them stacked.
Fold down the top left corner to form a triangle and crease it.
At the bottom edge, fold up about 5 mm to create a glue tab.
After gluing all the triangular sections together, lift the layers of paper at the bottom one by one, twist each once, and glue the glue tabs together.
The second is a leaf-shaped ornament.
The process is basically the same as the first, but make the bottom glue tab by folding it into a triangle in the opposite direction to the top triangle.