Puppet Show from a Cardboard Box

I'm back!! You probably thought I was done blogging and had abandoned all my readers. Not quite. I am sorry that I have been MIA for awhile. Between Halloween, and family visiting, and adjusting to a life with 3 kids I have just not been doing much crafting or blogging lately. But now things are calming down, we are getting back into a routine, and I am learning how to fit time in for "me", I can get back to the blog and sharing all my ideas.

Lately my kids have been obsessed with puppets. They begged me to make them a puppet show where they could play with their puppets. My original thought was to buy a nice wooden one for them for Christmas but then I realized I have a perfectly good cardboard box sitting in my garage that my double stroller came in.

So, I got to work. I cut out a square hole in the front and cut a door in the back with the hinge side on the crease of the box so it will swing freely. Then I spray painted it red (their color request). I used some spare fabric and made two panels. I gathered the panels at the top and stapled them to the box.

 The panels do not cover the entire hole but I wanted to make sure when they were pulled back there was plenty of space for the puppets to play since the panels don't slide like other puppet show boxes I have seen. Then I used a screw driver to make small holes on each side of the window, strung some yarn through the holes, and stapled the yarn in place on the back so it wouldn't get pulled out. These form the ties for the panels when the puppet show is taking place.

 

 

  

 It was a quick project but the kids think it is great and I love that I spent a total of $0 to make a perfectly good puppet show box. Now I can enjoy the kids imaginative stories every day.

Advent Calendar From Dry Food Containers

It might have been easier to purchase an advent calendar with chocolates from the drug store but I'm really happy I decided to make my own this year.  It was very time consuming but definitely worth it!

I used empty dry food containers for the dividers.

Very carefully cut each container until you have 25 circles.  I'm sure you could quickly do this step with a saw but a kitchen knife or hardware scissors will also do the trick.

I ran out of circular food containers so I had to use a few rectangles from cereal and cracker boxes.

Next I painted the circles.  You could cover them in paper or fabric instead.  The cardboard required several coats of paint.

While the paint was drying I worked on the gifts and tags. 

Our gift closet had plenty of stocking stuffers that were small enough for the calendar.

I wrapped each gift in matching paper and used tulle to attach the number tags.

A large piece of cardboard worked well for the base to the calendar.  I glued two felt pieces to the back to attach a tulle hanger.

The cardboard piece wasn't very pretty so I covered it in the same wrapper paper I used for the small gifts.

It took a few tries to get all the circles laid out on the cardboard backing with out going over the edges.  Once I had them all in place I used my glue gun to attach them to each other and the back.   

Luckily all the gifts fit into the small circles.

The advent calendar is now hung by our tree.  My daughter is so excited each morning to wake up and open a small gift!

I'm linking this post here.

 

Kids Craft - Monster Shoes

I had something different planned for this morning's post but when I saw my daughter having so much fun pretending to be a monster last night, I knew I had to share the easy monster shoes we recently made. 

The idea came from Disney's Family Fun magazine.  It is probably a craft more suitable for older kids to make themselves but my two year old daughter and her BFF had fun helping me put their shoes together.  We started with four empty tissue boxes. 

I let the girls pick out colored paper and then I cut out pieces to cover each side of the boxes entirely.  Each shoe had eight paper pieces (two rectangles for the sides, two squares for the ends, and four thin strips for the top).  I also cut three triangles for each shoe to embellish the front.  This was a perfect activity to work on identifying squares and rectangles.  I had the girls take turns handing me the appropriate shape for the side of the box I was covering.  I asked them the name and the color of the shape as I was using the glue gun to attach the paper.  By the time we were done I had two little square and rectangle pros! 

My daughter and her BFF had monster races for several hours after we finished our little project.

Our shoes were kept simple but I'm sure my daughter will want to embellish them with glitter and rhinestones later this week.  These would be so much fun to make at a monster themed birthday party!!

I'm linking this post here.

 

Robot Journal

I had a lot of fun making a gift for a friend's son last week.  It was his third birthday and he really likes robots.  I made him a robot themed notebook because he is very creative and I thought it would be fun for his mommy to have something to save full of his masterpieces. 

I'll share step by step instructions to make this project fun and easy. 

Supplies:

-piece of cardboard (this will be your journal cover so the piece should be large enough to be folded in half for a front and back cover (I used the front of a cereal box but keep in mind my journal is approximately half the size of a letter size notebook)

-fabric (enough to completely cover the front and back of your journal)

-Mod Podge

-hot glue gun (any other glue would probably work just fine but I LOVE my glue gun!)

-felt (enough to completely cover the inside cover of your journal)

-paper (enough to fill your journal)

-scissors

Optional:

-a friend with a cute kid having a birthday because this is the cutest birthday gift ever (obviously that's only my personal opinion)

1) Completely coat your cardboard with Mod Podge.  Don't worry about the size for now, you will be trimming it later.

2) Press your fabric directly onto the coated cardboard (back of fabric is pressed down).  Then give the top of your fabric a good coat of Mod Podge.

3) Let it dry (I left mine alone overnight but I'm sure it doesn't take that long to dry) and stare in awe of Mod Podge's mystical powers.

4) Trim your cover to your desired size.  Remember that you will be folding the piece of cardboard in half to make the front and back cover.  Don't cut two individual pieces to serve as the front and back.

5) Flip your pretty fabric covered cardboard over and cover it in hot glue (or your preferred glue).

6) Press a piece of felt onto the gluey (is that a word?) side of the cardboard.  Trim off any excess felt.

7) Fold your cardboard to make your journal cover.  The binding should be approximately one inch (depending on how much paper you plan to put in the book).  Measure in from the outer edge so you  remember to fold on the binding instead of directly in half.  I found it to be pretty easy to fold using my rotary cutter guide to press the edge of my fold as a guide.

8) Pick out the paper you want to permanently glue into your journal.

9) Cut it to fit your journal.  The dimensions are obviously dependent on the size of your cover.  Just make sure your pages are slightly smaller than your cover so the paper edges don't meet the edges of the cover.

10) Generously apply hot glue to the binding of your pages (I was skeptical too but this actually holds all the paper together). 

11) Apply more hot glue to the edge of the paper and push it onto  a strip of felt.  My felt was two inches wide but yours might end up being different depending on the overall size of your journal.

12) Use hot glue to attach the sides of the felt to the paper.

13) More hot glue!  Generously apply it to the felt that reinforces your page binding.

14) Push your gluey (there's that silly word again) felt back into the book cover. 

15) OPTIONAL - I chose to cut the edges of my paper because I wanted the journal to look interesting.  Remember this was for a three year old's birthday gift.

16) Embellish the cover to make it fun.  I used a wooden robot I had picked up from Joannes specifically for this project.  I also glued on the birthday boy's initial (cut from scrap felt).

You're done!  Now do what I did - wrap it up, sign a card, and run to the nearest post office to mail your belated birthday gift.   That's an optional step too.  You could always just look at your pretty new journal and smile thinking about all the wonderful things that will fill up the pages.

I'm linking this post HERE.

 





Recycled Grocery Boxes - Cute Notepad Covers

Wouldn't grocery shopping be so much more fun if you had a cute notepad for your shopping list?  I think so! 

I made a few notepad covers from grocery boxes (cereal, crackers, and pasta) last week and love how they turned out!!  I started with a few plain small notepads (purchased from walgreens 3/$1).  I cut a piece of cardboard (from a cereal box) that would completely cover the front of the notepad and fold over the top with approximately 3" overage for the back cover.  Then I cut strips of cardboard from the grocery boxes and used hot glue (only in the center of each strip) to attach them to the base cardboard.  I used a zigzag stitch to sew the edges of the cardboard strips.   I glued cute cardstock paper to the inside cover so the back of my stitches didn't show.  A few embellishments later and I had super cute notepads!

 I didn't worry about sewing the back or making it pretty...

 I love how all three turned out!!

I'm saving all my empty grocery boxes to make more!!

 

Getting creative with cardboard - refrigerator

My in laws gave my daughter a cute little play kitchen for her second birthday last year.  She has a small corner in our kitchen where she pretends to cook, wash dishes, make tea, and shop.  She loves playing kitchen!! 

Tomorrow we are having family over for an egg hunt and lunch.  Instead of cleaning or cooking or doing any of the ninety things I have to do before 11:00 am tomorrow, I decided to make a cardboard regrigerator for my daughter's kitchen space.  The project didn't exactly go as planned (notice I'm posting after midnight and have an incredibly busy day tomorrow!).  Lets just say the refrigerator that was supposed to be easy and cute was not so easy and is not so cute.  Luckily the only opinion that matters is my two year old daughter's and I'm sure she will love it.

I started by cutting a couple of cardboard boxes and gluing them together to make a bottom with shelves, a freezer, and two moving doors.

Then I painted the cardboard white.  I won't go into the poor choice I made with using acrylic paint on cardboard.  Perhaps I should start a "what not to do" series.  Maybe this project will be the first post there.  I'm getting sidetracked.  So I painted the exterior white and then found a belt that is about seven sizes too small for me (really, it was hooked to a clearance shirt I bought last year but was clearly the WRONG size!). 

I cut the belt and made handles for the regrigerator doors.  I just used hot glue to put them in place.  I'm aware this is not a very attractive refrigerator...

...but take a look inside!  I printed images from an online grocery store and glued them inside.   

More groceries definitely would have completely made up for the ugly exterior, but lets be realistic, it's late and tomorrow is Easter.  Maybe I'll let my daughter go "shopping" online and add grocery cut outs next week. 

I also wanted to share that this evening I tried using my hot glue gun on some eggs because of Jessica's fun post yesterday.  What a great idea!  I'm not really sure why but the glue stuck to a few of the eggs.  They still look cute!

 

My daughter had fun watching the eggs turn colors and then watching me try to peel off the glue.  Here's an example of an egg where the glue actually peeled off easily. 

Char from Crap I've Made shared a great idea for dying eggs using rubber cement glue.  Hers turned out much prettier but it was still fun to try something new!  You can see her orginal post here.  I used the rubber cement and then dropped the egg into another color after I peeled off the glue.