Paper Towel Roll Crafting

Spread the love

Papertoweltubecrafting.jpg For the past few months now I have been hoarding away empty paper towel rolls. I had built up quite the collection and the sight of the rolls piled up on top of my kitchen cabinet was starting to give me hives. It was finally time to put them to some use. Mai and I have been on a craft frenzy this week. We made a mess, had a few tantrums & a few laughs and smiles too. Each of these crafts that we made uses one of our paper towel tube.

Paper Mache Maracas

What you will need:

Plastic Easter eggs (1 for each maraca made)

An empty paper towel roll cut in half or two toilet paper rolls

Uncooked chickpeas or dried beans

Newspaper

Glue

Water

Masking tape

Paint

Directions:

Fill each Easter egg with chickpeas or beans

012

Use one or two full pages of newspaper & wrap in around the chickpea filled Easter egg. Form it into a ball shape.

023

Tape the edges in place to hold the shape tightly.

025

029

Enlist the help of your favorite little crafter to tear up strips of newspaper for you.

035

018

In a bowl, mix 3/4 glue and 1/4 water to form your paper mache adhesive.

 

024

Dip a strip of the paper into your glue mixture.

020

Wrap your strip of paper around your ball shape smoothing it out carefully as you work it around.

030

After you receive a desired shape, allow it to dry & then place your ball on top of the paper towel tube halve.

033

Adhere the ball to the tube using masking tape & then cover the tape with more newspaper strips.

034

Continue to wrap your project with the paper strips and glue until you reach the desired shape. Make sure that all areas are smooth and that edges are not sticking up. Let it dry.

038

Paint the handles of your maracas first in the color of your choice and allow to dry.

057

Once dry, continue to paint the rest. You may now use the handle to hold on to while you paint.

064

Papermachemaracas.jpg

Make beautiful music.

084

Mai thought these were rattles. As she was shaking them, she kept saying “Ooooooh, I’m a baby..so cute.”

086

Paper Towel Kaleidoscope

What you will need:

An empty paper towel roll

Colored beads

Thin plastic (I used old plastic packaging)

Heavy duty aluminum foil

Glue gun

Craft paper

Ribbon

Directions:

Cut out two pieces of plastic small enough to fit snuggly inside of the paper towel tube.

023

As deep in the tube as you can, use your glue gun and squeeze out a line of glue rotating until it meets the starting end.

002

Give it a few seconds to cool slightly and then press your plastic disk into the glue.

003

Pour the beads on top of the disk, leaving enough room for the beads to move around. Add hot glue to the top edge of tube over the beads and place the other disk in place.

008

Fold a piece of tin foil into a triangle. Push your triangle into the open end of the tube. Trim the end as needed. Make sure to reform the shape. It will work best if the triangle has crisp, hard edges.

018

Cut out another disk using cardboard or thick scrapbook paper. Poke a hole through the middle of it & glue it to the tin foil end.

043

I wrapped my kaleidoscope in craft paper, but you can decorate however you like, paint, crayon, beads, ribbon.

003

004

 

 

 

 

005

006

Papertoweltubekaleidoscope1

Not quite like the real thing, but it still is fun to play with.

045

Butterfly Craft

What you will need:

An empty paper towel tube

Foam sheets

Scrap book paper

Pipe cleaners

Craft pom poms

Glue gun

Elmer’s Glue

Directions:

This was a pretty simple one. You could also do this on a smaller scale with a toilet paper roll.

Cut out foam pieces in the shape of the wings.

040

Using different colored scrap strips, wrap around the tube and glue using the hot glue gun.

042

045

048

Run the glue gun along the edge of the wing where they should meet with the paper towel tube.

049

Pour some glue into a paper bowl and let your munchkin dip the pom poms in and glue to the butterfly.

051

Mai decides it is way more fun to stuff the pom poms in the tube than to decorate with them.

054

Glue one large pom pom to the top for your head & use pipe cleaners to make antennas. Let dry and your craft is done.

papertoweltubebutterfly.jpg

Author

12 comments

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.