Here is a fun activity with materials easily available. Egg cartons and toilet rolls, plus a few additional ingredients allow for many hours of creativity and entertainment. Check out some ideas for making all sorts of little characters, develop others. Once these little figures come to life you can play with them and develop all sorts of storylines.
What do I need?
- Empty egg cartons
- Toilet Rolls (the interior cardboard roll)
- Paint
- Pens
- Fabric, colour paper, wool, felt ….
- Scissors
- Craft Glue
Who can do it?
All ages. It’s particularly suitable for younger children.
What do I need to do?
- Use egg cartons. They provide lots of materials for creating figures. You can use all parts of the cardboard. The lid provides the base for hats, the underside the top part. The inner separation cones are ideal for pointy witches or fairy hats, and the rest material can be cut into flowers, feathers and whatever decorative items you can think of.
- Glue base and top of hat together.
- If you have differently coloured egg cartons you don’t need to paint. If you do, use acrylic or poster paint (for lighter colours a white undercoat may be helpful).
- Glue your decorative flowers, feathers or other ornaments on. Because of the size, curved nail scissors may be easier for flowers than larger straight cutting tools. Poke a little hole into the fairy hat (top of page) and insert any decoration.
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Toilet Rolls are perfect for crafting the body of little figures. Their decoration will depend on the character you would like to create.
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For Monsters you are likely to want to paint the body as well as eyes and mouth, teeth, or glue eyes and teeth on.(eyes from the craft shop, and teeth cut from felt, for instance).
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Witches are easy. One body colour, be it green or purple, can be enhanced by either painting facial features or using glue to add them. If you wish to have a different face, why not glue a piece of paper in the shape of a face onto the roll. Hair can be created by using felt, paper, wool. And the pointy hat is painted black and glued onto the toilet roll or rather on top of the ‘hair’.
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For Fairies use your own imagination and creativity. You may decide to wrap the entire roll into light coloured paper, glued into place, then draw the face and whatever you may want to add. Attach with glue the pointy hat made of egg carton material. Alternatively, you can paint the toilet roll including the face (see photo at top page).
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Scarecrows require some light coloured paint to enable the drawing of facial features. If you don’t have paint, glue some light paper around the upper part of the toilet roll and use felt pens to draw the face. Cut slots into two opposing sides of the toilet roll, at maximum a third down the roll. It usually is enough to cut no further than the bottom line of the ‘face strip’. That is low enough to allow for an ice cream stick to be put through. Your scarecrow has now arms. Cut tiny pieces of fabric and glue them on. Add the ‘stitching’ by hand with a pen. Add hair made of wool, straw, paper and whatever you can think of. Glue your little egg carton hat or one made of a coffee capsule, or a little paper hat on top, and you have the perfect little scarecrow. If you want to enhance the scarecrow experience why not read Julia Donaldson’s wonderful book ‘The Scarecrows’ Wedding’.
Download the flyer with information and instructions here.
