Cardboard Tubes, Yoghurt Pots & Lots of Tape!

My little lady is now really beginning to embrace my stash of junk and come up with brilliant ways to upcycle our cardboard and plastic. We happened upon some leopard tape in Home Bargains and at the crazy price of 50p for 10m there was no way that it was staying on the shelf so Jess started scheming and this is what she came up with...

One Cheetah tail for her and a Leopard-Giraffe model, which has a matching tail. The tails are toilet roll tubes cut into a spiral and covered in tape. Jess has worn hers all day and even sneaked out of bed to put it back on before going to sleep!

Junk Modelling Cat

My collection of "junk" is extensive. I just can't bring myself to put coffee tins, toilet rolls, plastic lids, yogurt pots or egg cartons out for recycling. It just sits in the conservatory waiting for inspiration to hit. Today the lightning bolt hit Jessica and she decided to make a... wait for it... oh yes, no surprises here, a cat! She chose four toilet rolls and two egg cartons from my collection. We cut out the central pieces from one egg carton to make the ears. After raiding my craft cupboards for tape,  glue, acrylic paint, googly eyes, pipe cleaners, a pompom and a feather we set to work and created this...

Here's a side-view to showcase the feathery tail...

As you might imagine, Jessica is very proud of this model of Nala, the cat from down the road!

Toilet Roll Castle

One of this weekend's crafting exploits was to make a kitchen and toilet roll tube castle for some of Jessica's characters. The rolls are wrapped in coloured paper and stapled together. The turrets are made from self-adhesive stuff (I really don't know what to call it!!!) from Home Bargains. Once I had cut the doors in, Jess added sticker windows and a few beautiful gems from her endless supply. Who doesn't love a toilet roll craft?!

Nest Building Again

The combination of the garden whispering to me that Spring is coming, the RSPB big garden birdwatch this weekend and our installation of a new nest box on Sunday has got me thinking about the birds this week. We're also trying to complete our RSPB Bronze Wild Challenge where we have to complete different tasks about either helping or experiencing nature. One of these tasks is to upcycle some of your rubbish so we thought we'd upcycle an old magazine into a nest or bowl or hat depending on your perspective!

It will probably end up as a bowl for pompoms or feathers in Jessica's play shop I think. We didn't use nearly as much paper this time, we've got gaps and have not trimmed the edges so it's definitely more nest like than our first attempt last Easter. We did it all in one go and it dried within an hour or two - fabulous! 

Apple Trees

It was our first day back at Toddler group today. Next week we're all off to an orchard to enjoy some fresh, juicy apples (weather permitting) so I thought we'd make our own apple trees this week. Paper, glue, toilet roll tubes and a craft punch - surely a winner! Actually, we were very low on numbers this week as the school's are all on inset so there were only about twelve trees made and at least half of them all went home together - sorry, Karen! The children did a combination of tissue paper and shredded paper and a few of them also made blackcurrant bushes and blueberry trees using some scrunched up purple tissue paper. I loved them.

"Do You Want to Build a Snowman..."

Picture the scene...

It's July. The summer holidays have just begun. It's hot and sticky outside but your three and a half year old is being Elsa. She has used her power to make the snow and ice for you both to play in but that is not enough, she has got to build a snowman. So, what do you do?

You raid one of your craft boxes for cotton wool, ribbon, pipe-cleaners, a feather and googly eyes, find a toilet roll tube and some glue and you help her make a snowman of course. What else could you do?!

Troll and My Little Pony Playground

I knew these boxes that David receives his razors in were going to come in useful! This one has made a fabulous playground for Jessica's ponies and Trolls erasers. I feel she has been pretty sparing with the sticker decorations but she was adamant that it was finished and has already spent hours playing with it. The best thing is it still closes so it's a very portable little playground.

DIY French Knitting (toilet rolls and craft sticks)

Meet Flopsy - one of Jessica's beautiful toy bunnies. She's a very well treated rabbit and is even the proud owner of a very attractive scarf created from some last scraps of wool, a toilet roll and five craft sticks. 

I taped the craft sticks to the toilet roll and set about French knitting...

A traditional knitting doll uses four pegs but there is no reason, from what I can tell, why you shouldn't use more. The fewer sticks or pegs you use the looser your knit will be. I really enjoyed using the large scale tool for this. I have a knitting doll but I've struggled to keep everything loose enough to be able to use it with ease. I also had some super chunky wool by me so I've gone even bigger scale to make a dressing up scarf for Jess. How fortunate that David had a tube from his Christmas White Port that I could use!

Cardboard Kitchen

Who needs a fancy wooden or plastic play kitchen? Not Jessica. She has a Mummy who buys paint taster pots when they're reduced to clear and then creates cupboards, cookers, washing machines, microwaves, shelving units and even a wine rack under the sink (actually, let's call that a drinks unit!) from cardboard boxes. Everyone knows that kids like nothing more than a cardboard box, right?!....

Toilet Roll Owls (Tesco Kit)

This was a Tesco's craft kit that Jessica particularly enjoyed putting together. We used glue dots as a time and mess saving cheat avoiding the need to wait for messy glue to dry but aside from that we just followed the instructions provided. They were clear and easy to follow; the kit made up as well as I would expect. Jess particularly liked the effect of using bottle tops as eyes. There was definitely no need to buy this kit, it wouldn't have taken me long to cut out all the pieces myself but I had spotted it on sale and was certainly worth the price I paid.