I love it when we make one craft, that inspires another one. A couple of weeks ago, we made fun dancing skeletons out of paper rolls. My daughter could not get enough of them. We were playing with them this week and making them dance and flip, when all of a sudden, our skeletons started doing flips on their own. We had wound the string on them so tightly that when we pulled the string to straighten it out, the skeletons spun around clumsily on their own. It reminded me of the paper spinners from my childhood. We were so excited, we couldn’t wait to play around with this idea more.
Tag
toilet paper
Cardboard Tube Bud Vase
Mother’s day is a month away. If you are looking for a cute gift idea for mom or grandma, these simple cardboard tube vases might be just what you are looking for.
My daughter loves to run around the yard and pick flowers for me. It is the sweetest thing. We will usually put the flowers in a Dixie cup and save them, but we thought that it would be nice to make and design our own bud vases. These cardboard tube vases are perfect for the spring and would make an adorable Mother’s Day gift. You can choose to make a tapered vase, as we did or keep it even simpler and keep the tube as is and glue it to a base.
Yarn Wrapped Cat in the Hat Hat
If you are a Dr. Seuss fan like we are, you may be looking for a fun and easy craft to celebrate his upcoming birthday. When you think of Dr. Seuss, what is the first thing that you usually think of. I almost always immediately think of the Cat in the Hat.
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My daughter loves that mischievous cat and all thing Dr. Seuss, so I thought that this simple yarn wrapped Cat in the Hat inspired hat would be perfect.
Cardboard Tube Lanterns
The Lunar New Year is just a couple of weeks away. Last week, we shared with you our paper plate hand fans. If you enjoyed those, you might want to try this simple idea as well. If you have an old cardboard tube and some paint kicking around, you can make one today to welcome in the Year of the Rooster.
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Cut an old paper towel tube into thirds or use a single toilet paper tube. Paint the inside of the tube and the outside in the color or colors of your choice and let dry. Paint or use markers to make a design for your lantern. We used Sharpies to draw simple branches with flowers. Let the paint and/or markers dry completely before going to the next step.
Cardboard Tube Haunted House
Recyclables make perfect craft materials. For one, they are free and you just cannot beat that. The other thing is that they are always readily available. I have a huge bin filled with egg cartons and assorted cardboard tubes that I save. I had collected so many tubes, that I had to make something with them.
With Halloween nearing, I had just the haunting craft in mind.
Toilet Paper Tube Scarecrows
We began a little fall decorating this weekend. We bought a bale of hay to use both for a fun sensory bin for my daughter & to pretty up our front yard for the season.
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We placed our hay in our front yard in anticipation of going to a local farm over the weekend for scarecrow making & pumpkin and gourd picking. I told my daughter that we were going to place scarecrows on our bale of hay. She told me that she wanted to make a girl scarecrow and a mama scarecrow. All of the scarecrow talk had me inspired to start making some scarecrows right now.
Cardboard Tube Scarecrows
What you will need:
Cardboard Tube
Acrylic Paint
Egg Carton Sections
Yarn
Buttons
Markers
Low Temp Glue Gun (Use caution when operating any glue gun.)
Directions:
Poke a slit on either end of your cardboard roll about 1/3 of the way down. Make it large enough so that the craft stick can slide through.
Take the stick back out & paint the stick in whatever color you will want your scarecrow’s shirt to be. Paint about a 1/4 of the tube in a flesh tone. Then paint half of the remainder in the shirt color & then the other half in the pant color. Let the paint dry.
Paint an egg carton section in whatever color that you want the hat to be & then cut out a wavy circle. Let the paint dry.
Glue the egg carton piece to the center of the foam shape.
Crumple up the foam a little so that it has a more natural hat feel.
Glue strands of yarn to the ends of the craft stick.
Glue a few strands of yarn over the top of the flesh toned area on the tube & then glue the hat on.
Glue more strands under the head & then glue on buttons. Draw a face on the scarecrow with magic markers.
The tubes fit perfectly over a couple of fingers to make fun puppets.
We made a mama scarecrow & a little girl one just as my daughter wanted. She had a ton of fun playing with these. These made a wonderful addition to her already amazing imagination for pretend play.
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Engineering Activity With Recyclables
Last weekend, I threw my sister a baby shower. I had been planning it for months. I made diaper cakes for every table with small woodland stuffed animals on top of each. Each diaper cake was built around a paper towel roll. I made nine cakes in all.
Toilet Paper Roll Christmas Stamps
Last Christmas, we made Christmas ornament stamps out of potatoes. These were a big hit with my daughter. She loves stamping projects & we are a big fan of potato stamps. I have seen many people using toilet paper rolls as stamps by bending them into various shapes such as leaves, hearts & pumpkins and I thought what a wonderful idea.
We used our tubes to form two different shaped ornaments. I cut one tube and bent it to form the top of the ornament.
I used a glue gun to glue the tops in place like shown. Make sure the top piece is flush with the tube.
The ornaments are then ready to stamp with. I cut out a Christmas tree shape for Mai to stamp on, but she was not interested in the tree. She just wanted to stamp on a plain piece of paper.
Mai did not want to use the tree, but mommy did. I stamped the ornaments on the tree & let the paint dry.
I used paint & glitter to decorate the ornaments & my daughter chose to use scissors & cut hers out for a project of her own.
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Toilet Paper Tube North Pole Scenes
Toilet Paper Roll Grapes
Before we had our daughter we kept a pretty neat home. We had little knick knacks on our coffee table, there weren’t scuffs & marker on our hardwood floor & I used to have a clean & bare refrigerator. I hated having things on my refrigerator. I thought it looked ugly to have shopping lists & magnets hanging off of it. Fast forward to today & things are a bit different. My kitchen is now an art studio. Our kitchen cabinets, our refrigerator & our kitchen windows are covered with all of my daughter’s arts & crafts.
This would have made the old me cringe, but now it just makes me smile. Since these days our art projects have become part of the decor, I thought at least we could make a craft that matches with our kitchen’s theme. It is Tuscan themed with grapes & vines, so we made a grape craft.
Toilet Paper Roll Grape Craft
Gather a few rolls & snip into 1/4″ rings.
Shape & arrange the rings as you go, to make sure that you have enough cut & map out your project.
Glue each piece into place. Mai helped apply the glue & I put them in place. Let the rings dry.
Let them paint within the glued shapes to make a pretty picture perfect craft & then let dry.
This will make a great addition to our artastic kitchen.
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