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Coraline had it’s ninth anniversary recently! It doesn’t seem like that many years since it has been out. I love this movie. It is fairly dark for a kid’s movie, so some little kids may be scared watching it. Although, I know quite a few young kids who really like it. This is Laika’s only movie that has lots of crafts and food related to it floating around on the web. There are so many amazing details in this movie, and I find it quite inspiring. This post has some ideas I’ve come up with based on the movie, but you can find many more on the web. Some of them are on my Laika Pinterest board.

Coraline must love dragonflies because she wears one on the clip in her hair and also has clothespin ones hanging above her bead. I found these dragonfly beads at Fire Mountain Gems. They are cool on their own, but I added some little jewels and sequins to them to make them look more like Coraline’s hair clip. At first I put these on a clip, but I realized it wouldn’t open properly and snapped the wings off of one of the beads.

I decided to sew it on to a fabric covered headband instead. This one is blue so it would blend into your hair if it is blue like Coraline’s. I stuck the decorations on with clear nail polish. Make sure you don’t cover up  the hole in the bead if you are going to sew it on to something!

The other dragonflies are the ones over Coraline’s bed. In the movie it looks like she made these out of paper and the type of wooden clothespin that is just one solid piece. They call all clothespins pegs in Australia, and to me that is a good name for that type. Then they are clipped onto a string with the other type of wooden ones. I could only find they type that opens up, so I just used those and clipped them on to the string.

I used fabric for the wings on these, but you could also use ribbon. I like how these turned out because the wings have one curved edge and one straight edge just like real dragonfly wings.

To make these I cut two fabric circles, a smaller one and a larger one. Then I folded the fabric circles in half and bunched them up and clipped them into the pin. I used glue to hold the wings on one side of the pin. That way the wings won’t fall out when you clip the dragonflies onto a string.

In one scene in the movie, Coraline’s neighbors bring out a 100 year old candy jar (the one in the movie is labeled 1921, so we almost are at 100 years!) when they are trying to find a way to help her find her parents.

They use knitting needles to free a seeing stone from the bottom of the dish. I rolled starbursts up into swirled candy and put them on a glass bowl. That functioned as a lid for the bowl. Inside of it I hid a seeing stone that I made out of fimo clay. I got the button key on Amazon.

The seeing stone is green and black and shaped like a triangle. If it was really made of stone, I think it would be malachite.

Coraline gets to eat whatever she wants when she visits the other mother, and one of those things is an orange mango milkshake. I made a float with orange soda instead. The price of all this is to get button eyes though!!!!!

The other mother makes “wonders” for Coraline. One is a beautiful garden. When you look at it from above the plants look like Coraline’s face. I used that image as a basis for this Coraline snack. I made this with bread, (the crust pieces are the eye brows), raspberries for the cheeks,  the tips of strawberries for the eyes, and two slices of strawberries for the lips. I used one of the dragonfly beads from above for her hair clip.

What is your favorite detail from this movie?