With Chinese New Year just around the corner, here’s a quick and easy craft. Here’s how to make paper fortune cookies.

A fortune cookie is a crispy, crunchy cookie with a “fortune” on the inside. While they are not really a Chinese tradition, they are a North American Asian tradition. They are often served as dessert after a Chinese meal.

Food is a big part of Chinese New Year. Perhaps not fortune cookies specifically, but this is a fun activity that can be done with kids.

Supplies Needed

lightweight paper – I used origami paper which had a pattern on both sides
plain paper for the “fortunes”
glue – either a glue stick or glue tape is easiest. If you are using thicker paper like construction paper or cardstock, you may wish to use a glue gun.

Write the Fortunes

This is the paper that will go inside the fortune cookies. I used plain white paper that measured 3 x .5 inches.

You have several options here. The fortunes can be handwritten or they can be printed.

I wanted my kids to practice writing Chinese, so I got them to write Happy New Year in simplified Chinese for our fortune cookies.

You could write in English and you could write other sentiments as well.

If you want to print out the simplified Chinese of Happy New Year, you can use this graphic. Simply right-click it to save and then paste it into a Word document.

Prepare your Fortune Cookie Paper

As mentioned, I use origami paper. I like the fact that it is thin and delicate. It also has a pattern on both sides. I know that origami paper is Japanese, but it was hard to find paper that looked Chinese that would work for this paper craft. I’m still on the lookout.

You could easily make this out of plain paper or other paper. Cardstock may work but you’d have to make sure that the glue was strong enough for the cookie to hold its shape.

The make paper fortune cookies you will need to cut your paper into 4-inch circles. I used my Cricut Maker to cut my paper as it was easier and I know that it would come out perfectly.

You can find my template for the circle, as well as the paper size for the fortunes in my shared file on Cricut Design Space. The link can be found in my Free Resource Library. You can get the password to my Free Resource Library by subscribing. The password is located at the bottom of my newsletters.

4-inches makes a good-sized fortune cookie. If you wish to make them bigger or smaller, you can easily re-size them in Cricut Design Space. You may wish to adjust the size of the fortune paper as well if you are changing the size of the fortune cookie.

Since the origami paper is quite thin, I cut it on the washi setting. Although the paper was double-sided, I did put what I thought was the better side, faced down as it curled once I took it off the mat. This way it curled in the direction I wanted.

If you don’t have a Cricut you can easily cut 4-inch circles using a template that you trace around and then cut with scissors. The paper fortunes can be cut using a paper cutter. I just used plain white paper for those.

My kids, who have eaten many a fortune cookie, helped me determine the best method of making them. I’ve tried a few different techniques and came up with the one that to me and my kids that looks most like an actual fortune cookie, based on size and shape. Other methods had the side openings too large and others resulted in an odd shape.

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How to Make Paper Fortune Cookies

On the right side, add glue to one end of the circle.

Overlap the opposite side by about a quarter of an inch. It should be a tube – somewhat like a cannoli (I know, the wrong country but it was the best analogy I could think of)