Cardboard roll bracelets

This was a quick craft to keep my 3-year old daughter busy one Saturday morning while I was making the toilet roll Advent calendar!
I found a large cardboard tube that fitted onto her wrists, cut two pieces and just let her run free with paints, glue and decorative flowers. Once she was done I varnished them and added some gold foil around the edges. She did a great job!

Home-made advent calendar

Chocolate advent calendars on the equator are a really bad idea. So I decided to make one myself this year, from a whole load of empty cardboard tubes (toilet and kitchen rolls), crepe paper, tissue paper, cardboard, gold and silver paint and some glitter glue. The backing was an old quilter's cutting board that I painted with white wall paint. The tubes are covered in crepe paper inside and out and the lids are made from cardboard discs covered in crepe paper and held into place with small hair-bands. I traced all the numbers from cardboard and decorated them before gluing onto the lids. I filled it with loads of plastic tot that my daughter just loves; the little parts of a Playmobil set, some bracelets, etc.

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DIY doll's house shower

This is made from an After Eight box, a couple of straws, some beads and buttons, some plastic wrapping, a plastic clothes tag and the blister packaging from a packet of tablets.

How I made it

First I removed one side of the After Eight box but kept the fancy edge which I glued onto the new edge. I painted the edges with white acrylic paint, and lined the inside with sewing pattern paper that I'd painted with acrylic paints to give the impression of tiles. Then I glued a round plastic clothes tag onto the base to make the shower floor.

I covered the outsides, top and bottom with foam sheet

I made the shower unit from a bendy straw-  I glued 2 blisters from a pack of tablets half way down to make a soap dish, a piece of straw with a red and blue button either side to make taps, and a large flat button at the top to make the shower head. Once it was all glued firm I painted the whole lot with several layers of silver acrylic paint, and put black dots on the shower head.

I also glued silver beads along the top and sides to attach to the shower unit, and glued it in place.

I made the shower curtain from a piece of plastic wrapping- I painted hearts on with acrylic paint, then stuck circular stickers along the top and punched holes through with a hole-punch. I made the shower rail from a bendy straw with a pipe-cleaner threaded through and hooked the whole thing up.

DIY Doll's house fridge-freezer

Here's a doll's house fridge-freezer made from a biscuit box, some foam card and a few other bits and pieces.  
              

Instructions

First I took a biscuit box and cut it down to make two smaller boxes of the same size, with extra length to make flaps so I could close the boxes.

I lined the insides with foam card (apart from the front where I wanted the door to be), then glued the flaps shut.

I cut doors out of the front, then glued the two compartments together. Then I covered the outside with white foam card.

Next I traced and cut door frames from a piece of white card, and glued them onto the frames of the doors.

I also cut pieces of panelling for the inside and outside of each door from white foam card, which were slightly larger than the door itself. Once all glued in place, I trimmed them all down to size so that the doors were very slightly smaller than the frames and were able to close shut.

Next I made door handles from pieces of straw covered with the discarded silver wrapper from the biscuits that were inside the box! I glued the wrapper in place, and stuck silver star stickers onto the ends to seal the handles shut. 

I glued the handles in place on the doors, and cut a strip of coloured card and glued round the middle to cover the joints.

Finally I made shelving out of some corrugated plastic from a vegetable container, and I made a door shelf and vegetable tray from some moulded plastic from the inner packaging of a box of something (possibly a phone or modem) I'd kept by. 

And put it all together. All the shelves are glued in place, apart from the vegetable tray which is removeable. Voila!

Cardboard box doll's house

Kids toys are pretty expensive in Gabon, so I'm turning into a bit of a bag lady, stockpiling household rubbish in the hope of making all kinds of inspirational recycled toys.
This was my first efforts at turning cardboard box into a dolls house. The box came from a garden swimming pool and was about 1m high. I just cut the thing in half lengthways, and cut up the discarded half to make the floors and roof. I covered it with a load of patterned paper I'd bought and also some photos from magazines. It's not finished yet, btw.