TP roll furniture - French style bedside table

 

Who'd have thought cardboard tubes would be so handy for mini-furniture?

Daffodil toilet paper roll posy

This is a slightly adapted version of the snowdrop posy - the only extra thing you'll need is some orange or yellow tissue paper.

Toilet paper roll flower posy - snowdrops

Toilet paper rolls and egg cartons are brilliant for making flowers, there are so many flowery possibilities! These little posies are very similar to ones we've made before

Paper roll armchairs

Back to squishing toilet paper tubes flat to make these sweet little armchairs! They're to add to our shoebox sitting room, but you really don't need a shoebox house to make one.

Toilet paper roll oven and washing machine

Forever flattening toilet paper rolls, that's me! It's really quick and easy to do once you've got the hang of it, and this simple technique opens up no end of possibilities.. 

Like these sweet little kitchen appliances.

Sleepy Cat - made from toilet paper rolls!

Squashing toilet paper tubes to make different shapes opens up a whole new world of crafting possibilities! If you visit my blog regularly you'll know I'm forever flattening them to make a square shape..

These sleepy cats are no exception, and they're really not as tricky to make as you might think. It's all about the cutting and the folding. They are made in a similar way to our dog (called Scamp) and pig (called Oink!)

You will need

Toilet paper roll (ours was about 10cm long)
Small piece of spare card (from a cereal box or another TP roll)
Pencil
Ruler
Scissors
Craft glue
Paint
Sponge (optional)
Black pen.

1. Flatten the TP roll with your hand, then press firmly along the creases.

2.  Draw two lines across the flattened tube - each one should be about the same distance from the ends, and shorter than the section in the middle (which will be the cat's body)

(For our roll which was roughly 10cm long, we drew lines that were 3cm from each end and the middle part was 4cm. See the picture below).

3. Then lift the tube and line up the two creases, in the middle (see below), and once you're happy, flatten the tube again, pressing along the two new side creases. There should now be four, hopefully evenly spaced crease lines around the tube.

4. While it's still flat, continue the pencil lines across the tube - free-hand is fine, the lines are just there as a guide.

5. Cut down all the creases at both ends to the pencil line.  8 cuts altogether.

6. Fold and press back all the flaps, except for two at opposite ends. These flat pieces will be the bottom part of the cat (the outstretched legs).

7. At one end, cut the top flap off, carefully along the crease. This square-isn piece will be your cats head. Keep it somewhere safe.

8. To define the legs, cut a thin triangle shape in the middle of the flat, unfolded piece of card. Cut right up inside your cat's body. Do this at both ends and round off the paws if you want.

9. Now, at the head end (the one with no top flap), fold one of the side flaps right back against the side of the tube, press firmly along the crease again, then fold this flap in the middle (so, effectively in half) so the top edge of the flap lines up with the bottom part of the flap (the edge of the body), and press firmly along the folds.

10. Do the same on the other side, then push these folded flaps inwards, towards the tube.

11. They should come together well enough, like little doors, to seal off the front of your cat.

They will jut out a bit in the middle (see RHS of photo below), but this is what we want, because this is where the head will be attached later. No need to use any glue at this stage.


12. Do exactly the same to the flaps at the other end, but this time, before you push them inwards, into the tube, cut a slit up the middle of the top flap, right up to the fold (cut a sliver of card out, to make a slightly larger slot - this makes things easier)

As you can see ours isn't exactly in the middle! But it still works, it doesn't need to be perfect. Push this top flap down, to cover the hole, and then press the two side flaps into the slot.

Essentially it's like closing a little box! And it should hold together without glue.

13. Now for the tail - draw on some spare card (we used another tp roll, so both sides were easy to paint)

We made our tail quite curly and quite fiddly to cut out! So do go for a simpler shape if you prefer.

Make the tail extra long at the body end, so you can slot it into the back.

It should stay in position, but take it out again for painting.

14. Take the square of card you cut off earlier for the head, and cut a gentle curve along one side, to form the cat's ears.

15. Time to paint, and we used a sponge, which was fun and really quick! For our marmalade cat we squirted some yellow and a little red poster paint onto a sheet of newspaper (with an extra sheet underneath) and used the sponge to mix the colours and press the paint onto the cardboard pieces.  Using the sponge gives a lovely mottled effect.

Sponge both sides of the tail.

(might notice the newspaper's been recycled from the forget-me-not printing project!)

16. When the paint's dry, slot the tail back in (dab some glue on the end, if you feel it's a bit loose) and use a black pen (gel or thin marker pen) to draw on a face, plus claws on the front paws.

We added some tabby stripes to the face on the left with an orange Sharpie. You could draw stripes on the body too if you wanted.

Put a good blob of glue on the back of the head and attach to the top of the protruding flaps at the front. You could glue it so the head is facing forward, or glue the head angled to one side, as we did.

And here's my real sleepy cat!!

Pretty toilet paper roll butterflies!

I love butterfly crafts, and this is a very straightforward one. A great excuse to use lots of bright colours too!

You will need:

Toilet paper rolls

Paints (we used bottles of poster paints)

Scissors

Pencil

Pipe cleaner

1. Paint your tubes first. To get a really nice mix of bright colours, put two or three blobs of colours that work well together on different plates (ones that don't make sludgy brown when mixed!). 

Like yellow and red, blue and white, or blue and yellow, green and yellow, yellow and pink, or blue, pink and white. White added to any of these colour combos looks great. We had some ready mixed purple too, which looked lovely with the pink and the blue.

This is a great way for kids to experiment with colour mixing, using a simple palette of complementary colours. Give them a big brush to paint with (we often use a pastry brush) - this helps with the mixing and with speed.. and then let them loose!

We painted the inside of the tubes as well, but you really don't need to. Works just as well without.

Mixing up the complementary colours gives a lovely marbly or sort of tie-dye effect. But if you wanted to do stripes of colours instead, or add some dots, that's totally up to you!

2. When the paint is dry, flatten a tube with your hand and press along the creases, so it's easier to draw on.

3. Use a pencil to mark the outline of your butterfly - for the butterfly body, mark about 3cm/1in along the crease, on the left-hand-side. To get the proportions of the top and bottom wings right, we drew this body line a little closer to the bottom of the tube than the top.

(As a guide, our TP roll was about 10cm, the body line starts 4cm from the top of the tube, and finishes roughly 3cm from the bottom of the tube.

Draw a curved line from the top of the body line to the top right-hand corner.

Make a pencil mark halfway down the body line on the LHS.

Draw a straight line from the right-hand edge towards this mark, but leave a gap (of about 2cm).

From the end of this line in the centre of the tube, draw a big curve down to the bottom right-hand corner.

Then, from the bottom of the body line on the LHS, draw another sweeping curve towards the same corner, but for fuller bottom wings, don't take this line right to the corner, stop a little before. See photo below.

4. Cut out your butterfly, cutting through the doubled-over card.  With the middle section, it's easier if you cut along the straight line first, then cut along the curve below, starting at the bottom right-hand corner.

5. Cut away a little sliver of the top wing crease. Cut it at a slight angle. See below.

Don't cut off too much!

6. Open up your butterfly. The natural curve of the tube makes a lovely shape.

7. Bend a pipe-cleaner in half and hook it around the middle of your butterfly.

Twist the two pieces together to fasten, then wrap one tightly around the other, to make a head.

When you're happy, decide how long you want the antennae to be and trim the pipe-cleaners, allowing a little extra if you want to bend over the pointy tips so they're not so sharp. Bend into shape.

8. We made so many butterflies we needed somewhere to put them! So we painted some old cardboard packaging brown (you could leave it its natural colour) and cut out a tree trunk and some branches.

We glued them all onto some brown wrapping paper with pva craft glue. But didn't stick down the very ends of the branches, so they stuck out a bit.

Then attach a paper clip to the pipe-cleaner on the underside of a butterfly and clip this onto the end of a branch.

If you don't want to be able to remove them, you could of course glue the butterflies onto the tree.

Stay Home and Easter Craft!

These are such strange and uncertain times.  Life for everyone has changed beyond measure, but the one thing we do have is time. For many of us that means an abundance of time at home with kids. Now obviously this can be both a blessing and a major challenge.. keeping little ones busy and doing something worthwhile isn't always easy, and that's where craft comes in.

Cutting, gluing, creating, painting and getting messy can be such a fulfilling way to spend time together. And you don't need shop bought craft supplies - some of the best stuff to craft with you probably have at home already, like cardboard tubes, boxes and egg cartons. Transforming everyday objects is when the magic happens!

And it's not just the kids who're occupied and using their imaginations. Getting a little lost in a craft project can be a perfect distraction for us too. A bit of craft therapy is a good thing at the moment.

It also helps to have a theme and a focus, with days stuck at home stretching ahead of us - so with Easter racing up, I've put together a collection of Easter crafts you might want to try - birds, trees, bunnies, fish, butterflies and flowers! Just click on the title for the full project.

Egg Carton bluebirds in an Easter tree

The little egg carton birds are a big favourite here, and these blue birds are a really simple to make version. Change the colour and size if you want, it's totally up to you. The same goes for the tree top - why not try a different shape?

Easter bunny egg holder!

Well, it doesn't have to be an egg holder, but any opportunity to sneak in some chocolate! This would make a lovely table place setting for Easter day. Make one per child, pop their name on a piece of paper and prop it in front of the ears. Hide a little treat inside.

Shiny Happy Easter Crafts!

REMEMBER TO HOLD ONTO YOUR EASTER EGG FOIL!!  I know that's sometimes tricky with eager, impatient little chocolate egg hunters, but there's plenty you can do with it, even the small bits!! The great thing about using foil to cover cardboard shapes is you can easily wrap the bits that go over the edge, underneath. This gives a really neat finish.

Rainbow Foil Fish

This is a good way to use up those smaller pieces of foil. Great for a picture collage or a shiny mobile.

Springtime Egg Carton Posy

Such a bright and cheery craft - egg cartons are brilliant for making flowers. They make lovely gifts too.