What can be done from an empty box. Crafts from cardboard boxes do it yourself
Summary: Crafts from cardboard boxes for children with their own hands. We make children's crafts from cardboard and paper. Craft from garbage or waste material.
Every day we throw away a large number of different unnecessary things, including boxes. Large and small, multi-colored and plain, from under sweets, shoes, household appliances. This list can be continued indefinitely. And few parents thought about what beautiful and original crafts are made from this waste material. You just need to show creativity and imagination. Children love to make crafts from cardboard boxes. The versatility of this material allows you to fully reveal your creative abilities. Believe me, even now, when everything ready can be bought in the store, our children will take up crafts from the boxes with no less pleasure. Note: When making crafts from boxes, a glue gun is very useful.
1. Crafts from cardboard. Crafts from cardboard boxes
From large and small boxes, with very little time and effort, you can make furniture and household appliances for children's games. A stove, refrigerator, washing machine, doll bed, wardrobe - all this is easy to make from cardboard boxes.
Buttons, burners, control panels, handles - all these details can either be drawn on cardboard or made from old, unnecessary CDs, plastic bottle caps, and other waste material. The sink will be replaced by an iron bowl built into the box.
Of course, toys can be bought in the store. Only the benefits from them will be less than from homemade ones. After all, the very process of creating crafts (toys) from waste material contributes to the development of creative thinking and imagination in a child. In addition, games with homemade toys, substitute toys, also develop a child's imagination much more than games with ready-made toys. Playing with homemade toys, the child is forced to think of something, to imagine, because such toys are not an exact copy of real things. The baby has more opportunities for creativity. The same cardboard box today can be a stove, tomorrow - a table for dolls, and after - a TV. And the child himself, in his inner world, endows the box with the missing details for the game.
A bed for a doll can be made from one box, figuratively cutting out the sides of it, or from two boxes, gluing them together. In the second option, you get a bed for a doll with legs.
A craft useful for the development of coherent speech in children is a home-made TV out of the box. How to make this cardboard craft, and how to use it later for developmental purposes, read the link.
2. Crafts for children from boxes. Crafts from cardboard and paper
From a large cardboard box, for example, from a refrigerator, you can make a children's house. Make a door, windows in it, lay a rug inside the house, decorate the house with cheerful curtains, paste over the walls with beautiful pictures, stickers or children's drawings.
An interesting idea is to decorate a children's house with an LED garland.
From cardboard boxes of a smaller size, you can make a house for dolls or a knight's castle.
If you have accumulated a large number of small boxes, then you can make a whole city out of them. Read more about how to make beautiful houses out of cardboard boxes.
You can make a garage for cars or a parking lot from cardboard toilet paper rolls and boxes.
3. Crafts from waste material. Crafts from boxes
A large cardboard box can easily be turned into a car, plane or ship by the imagination of a kid who has climbed inside it. Mom and dad can help the kid organize an interesting and useful game by adding the necessary details to the homemade transport. Steering wheel, wheels, headlights - all this can be done from improvised things, the main thing is to show imagination.
If you make a car or an airplane out of a medium-sized box, and then attach straps to them, you get a car / airplane costume. Wearing such costumes, children can play pretending to be cars or planes. Boys will especially like these games.
4. Crafts from boxes with your own hands. Crafts from garbage
March 20th, 2013
In order to come up with a new toy with a child or make a simple craft, you don’t need much. Usually enough free time and our imagination. And what to do? - available at hand. My son and I already have a whole fleet of yogurt jars, and the best ships we have come from viola jars and soft butter. We will devote this review to toys and crafts that you can make with your child from all sorts of "garbage" - boxes and boxes, cardboard, plastic bottles and much more.
1. Cardboard boxes and boxes
Let's start, perhaps, with crafts from boxes and smaller boxes. Boxes of different sizes regularly appear with each of us (especially during the holidays), but we usually try to get rid of this "happiness" as soon as possible, since it is quite inconvenient to store them. But you can immediately put them into action
Big boxes.
Oversized boxes make absolutely amazing toys for children.
Or an airplane
House-mill. Detailed master class at the link
Pirate treasure chest. Description
Parking for cars.
how to do
pic
Or a more complex version
pic
And another version of the castle
pic
From smaller boxes
Or those dinosaur feet
pic
Storage monster boxes
Great storage idea out of the box and cardboard rolls
pic
small stove
pic
catapult game
pic
Train with wagons
pic
pic
aliens
pic
More ideas from cardboard sheets
pic
pic
Or such
pic
And here is the castle of the knight and princess
If you paste over with decorative paper and decorate, then why not gift wrap for all sorts of sweets, for example
pic
Lamp
pic
And you can also make such an aquarium with your children
pic
Boxes and cardboard are real scope for creativity, if you wish, you can do whatever you want, I think we will return to this topic in the near future, we have something interesting in store
2. Cardboard rolls from toilet paper and paper towels
Easy crafts you can do with your kids
pic
monsters
pic
octopus
jerks
pic
A lot of different animals with patterns can be viewed at the link
pic
Binoculars for children or a spyglass from a roll of towels
pic
Or make crowns of princesses for a children's party
pic
And here is an amazing idea on how to make crackers for the holiday. Description
pic
racing cars
pic
3. Disposable tableware - paper and plastic plates and glasses
For disposable tableware, you can also find an original application.
Paper plates are very convenient to paint
And from deep plates you can make such jellyfish
pic
Or even make a garland decoration for the holiday
pic
From a plate and a glass you get such a pretty house
pic
Spider glasses
pic
cup dragon
pic
It is very easy and fun to turn ordinary cups into freaks. Great idea for kids parties
And here's an advent calendar idea
pic
And even a New Year's garland can be made from cups
pic
4. Plastic bottles and containers
feeder
pic
For children on a holiday
pic
From bottles and spoons
If it's raining outside or guests with children come to you and you need something to keep them busy - home bowling
pic
And in small bottles it's fun to germinate grass. Just in time for Easter
pic
And the bottles turn into ...... a rocket, more precisely, into the main attribute
Planes and ships from shampoo containers
5. Wooden sticks for ice cream and medical spatulas
These are very simple and cute crafts you can make from ordinary wooden ice cream sticks.
puppet theater people
pic
pic
Raft ship
pic
It's also easy to make an original puzzle game.
Can you make a whole house?
Chests of medical spatulas. Description
6. Straws for cocktails
With the help of such tubes, it is very interesting to draw with cartoon bubbles.
And the tubes are great as a mast for boats.
You can come up with many different games with such tubes. For example, you can arrange "air" football. Roll up a small ball out of paper and use the tube to drive the "ball". By the same principle, you can play who will fly the ball farther or who will get to the finish line faster. This kind of games are very useful, it is a kind of breathing exercises.
7. Sponges
Even the most ordinary sponge can turn into ....
a garden bed (it's fun to germinate seeds in a large-pored sponge)
Or make stamps for drawing or just paint with a sponge (rainbows come out especially well)
And to make it more convenient to draw with such stamps, you can glue them, for example, on a wine cork, as here
You can also make sponges, for example, heads for robots
8. Wine corks
On the Internet you can find a huge variety of photographs on the topic of crafts from traffic jams, but we will limit ourselves to stamps only.
9. Tin cans
for flowers
By the way, if you have buckets of paint left in your country house, do not rush to throw it away.
storage
candlesticks
monster
old town game
airplane
here and
Jar with wishes or Smile box
this is such a jar or box filled with small pieces of paper with various wishes, pleasant phrases, anecdotes, encouraging mottos or declarations of love.
Get her at home like a jar. This is a real generator of daily good mood.
pic
A snow storm or, as it is correct, a snow globe, but in this case, rather a glitter jar. Description
And in summer, for street holidays, jars can be used for drinks. Look very unusual and stylish
And finally, a very original craft from an old light bulb
pic
When compiling this collection, materials from the Kokokokids blog were also used.
Send us your interesting finds of crafts from what is at hand, and also share with us what you did! This topic is inexhaustible and I think we will return to it more than once
Quick article navigation
Cardboard is easy to bend, cut, paint, glue, stitch and hold its shape, and it is always available. What you need for children's creativity, the development of fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, logical thinking and imagination! In this article, we presented 13 super ideas, 100 photos, 1 step-by-step master class and a selection of video tutorials on making DIY cardboard crafts.
Where to get cardboard?
For the manufacture of children's crafts, in addition to sheet color or corrugated cardboard from the store, you can use the following improvised and waste materials:
- Cardboard boxes (you can ask the warehouse workers of the nearest store);
- Disposable paper tableware;
- Bushings from toilet paper and paper towels;
- Packages of cereals and sweets, such as corn flakes;
- Egg packaging (it is good to use cells);
- Dairy product packaging.
13 Cardboard Craft Ideas + Master Class
Idea 1. Construction toys
Cardboard "constructors" are good because they are easy to make and decorate, it is interesting to assemble and, of course, play with them. You can come up with and design such a toy yourself, or you can make it using a ready-made scheme from our article or found on the Internet.
Click on the photo to download the templates for these figurines
Click on the photo to download the templates for these figurines
Idea 3. Puppets or just puppets with moving parts
Making a puppet out of cardboard is very easy and fun. You just need to draw the details of the little man, cut them out and fasten them with mini pins (sold in scrapbooking stores).
- Instead of special fasteners, you can use thin wire (for example, for beading). Just cut a piece of wire 2 cm long, thread it through the holes of the parts and twist its ends from the front and back sides as shown in the photo on the right. You can also use metal rings as fasteners.
If you want the figurine to become a real puppet, then you can:
- Connect the arms and legs with a single thread, as shown in the photo below, or with two threads (one thread connects the legs, and the other connects the arms).
- Tie a rope to each arm and leg, then tie all 4 ropes to the ends of the sticks folded crosswise. An example of such a puppet is shown in the following photo.
Idea 4. Finger puppets
Finger puppets are made even easier and faster: a small figure is drawn, then two holes are cut in its lower part. Voila, the first "actor" for the puppet theater is ready! In the following selection of photos, you can get some ideas for finger puppets.
Idea 5. Ground, air, water and space transport
A car, plane, bus, ship, boat or rocket made of cardboard is just as good as a store-bought one. After all, making such a toy with your own hands together with your parents already seems like a fun adventure. And when the cardboard vehicle gets tired, it can be used to make other toys and crafts.
Idea 6. Kitchenette
If you have a couple of square-shaped boxes, then why not make a mini stove and sink out of them?
From one box of a rectangular elongated shape, you can make a refrigerator.
If there is enough space in the room, a washing machine can also be added to the kitchen.
A master class on how to make cardboard crafts in the form of kitchen furniture, see the following video.
Idea 7. Toy equipment and household items
Need props for role-playing games or things to decorate a cardboard house? We offer to make them from cardboard with your own hands.
Idea 8. Masquerade costumes
Is a matinee or performance coming up in a kindergarten or school? Or just your kid loves reincarnations? From cardboard you can make an amazing outfit. Here are photo examples of cardboard masquerade costumes for boys.
And here are photo examples of cardboard costumes for girls.
Idea 9. Bookmarks for books
For making bookmarks, it is better to use not too thick colored cardboard, and in order for the craft to last as long as possible, it should be laminated with transparent tape.
Idea 10. Aquarium with fish
Cut off the lids of the cardboard box and paint its inside in blue-blue tones, if desired, decorate the aquarium with applications from plasticine, sparkles, colored paper, etc. Cut 3-5 holes along the top of the box and thread through each hole. Next, cut out 3-5 fish from colored paper. Attach a large button (on the outside of the aquarium) and a fish to each thread. That's it, the aquarium is ready.
Idea 11. Town in a box
You just need to cut the sides of the box and paint on the inside and... voila! You get a city with roads, with which the child will play for hours, moving cars and figures of men.
Idea 12. Volumetric toys made of corrugated cardboard using quilling technique
Volumetric crafts can be "wound" using the quilling technique from corrugated cardboard. Having mastered the skill of forming various figures, the child will be able to experiment with shapes and colors and even create figures of their favorite cartoon characters.
Materials and tools:
- Cardboard box;
- Tracing paper or white tissue paper;
- Black cardboard (you can paint ordinary cardboard with a thick layer of black paint);
- White pencil;
- Wooden skewers, straws or wire;
- Scotch tape and / or glue;
- Scissors;
- Stationery knife.
STEP 1. First we need to make the theater body. To do this, cut off the lid from the box, and then cut out its bottom.
Step 2. Cut off a piece of tracing paper that is larger than the size of the box. Gently glue it to the sides of the theater with a little tension, as shown in the photo.
Step 4. Now it's time to cut out the characters of the future performance from black cardboard. Keep in mind that the more detailed the silhouette of the figurine is, the more realistic the shadow theater will be. Therefore, it is best to draw figures using the templates found on the Internet and printed.
Step 5. The shadow theater is almost ready, it remains only to glue the figures to wooden skewers or wires. You can stick them as shown in the photo below or perpendicular to make it easier to control the characters.
Helpful Hints
Cardboard is a versatile material from which you can make not only boxes, but also various crafts, as well as things that are quite useful in everyday life.
This environmentally friendly material is easy to find and quite easy to work with.
Here we have collected the most interesting and useful things that you can make from cardboard at home or in the country.
How to make a cable / cord / wire organizer out of cardboard
You will need:
Toilet paper rolls
Cardboard box (from shoes is ideal)
Tape or glue to hold the grommets together (optional)
* The number of bushings depends on the number of cables and space in the box.
* You can fill the box full or half full with bushings to leave room for larger items.
* So that the bushings do not hang out in the box and fit snugly together, you can fasten them with tape or glue.
Cardboard Crafts: Laptop Stand
From an ordinary pizza box, you can make a convenient laptop stand. This stand was created by Russian designer Ilya Andreev. He cleverly managed the folds on the cardboard to create a folding stand.
Another option for a cardboard laptop stand
You will need:
Stationery knife
Ruler (preferably metal)
A place where you can cut (a plank or a special rug)
Glue (PVA or hot).
* Select the dimensions of the parts according to the dimensions of your computer.
* Make incisions on the parts about 6 cm.
* This stand has been designed for 13" and 15" laptops.
*Use glue to secure all the pieces starting from the bottom.
* Allow the adhesive to dry before testing the stand.
Triangular shoe rack made from cardboard boxes
You will need:
Scissors or utility knife
Ruler and pencil
Wide tape.
* Each module in this shelf is a triangular tube. Its size depends on the size of the shoes.
First you should make one module.
1. First, cut the cardboard, divide it into 3 parts with a pencil and a ruler, bend it into a triangle and secure with a wide adhesive tape.
2. Create some more modules in this way.
3. Each row of triangular modules must be glued to a sheet of cardboard for stability.
4. You can put another cardboard box on top.
Cardboard organizer (scheme). Option 1: for papers and documents.
You will need:
cereal boxes
Scissors
Colored tape or colored paper for decoration (optional)
PVA glue.
1. Glue the boxes together.
2. Wrap the boxes with colored cardboard or colored wide tape.
Do-it-yourself cardboard organizer (scheme). Option 2: for papers and magazines
Cardboard organizer for stationery (photo)
You will need:
cereal boxes
Scissors
Colored tape or colored paper
PVA glue
Cardboard sleeves from toilet paper or paper towels.
Do-it-yourself cardboard shelves (photo)
1. Prepare the cardboard. If you have boxes, then straighten them.
2. Now you need to make a hexagon from a sheet of cardboard. To do this, you need to make additional folds, one on each of the two largest sides of the cardboard.
3. Place the box flat and make a couple of slits (see image) so that the tops of the figure can be bent towards the center.
Has it ever happened that you brought your child a toy in a huge box, and as a result, he plays with the box, and the toy lies lonely in the corner? Previously, children had to build their own huts, but now there are ready-made tents, before they had to invent games for themselves, but now everything ready flaunts on store shelves. But there are so many things you can think of if you take an ordinary box as a basis!
What can be made from a box for a boy?
With boys, everything is quite logical and exciting at the same time. The first thing that can be done from a cardboard box for a little mischievous person is transport. And here you are completely unlimited! It is enough just to turn the box upside down and draw the headlights with the door. You made a car! With duct tape, scissors, and a little free time, you can build a rocket, a ship, even a space dish!
But if you just want to spend time and make something special together, you can make traffic lights, some manage to make tracks for small racing cars. And the simplest and no less interesting thing that can be made from empty boxes from large things like a refrigerator is just a space for creativity. It is enough to allow the baby to climb inside and give more pencils and felt-tip pens. Rest assured, he will definitely find something to do! And another quite useful thing that can be done from a box for a boy concerns the development of fine motor skills, namely a huge lacing from a separate part of the box.
Well, if you have a holiday ahead and the little knight wants to put on armor, they can be made from pieces of the box. In exactly the same way, you can make a robot suit out of smaller boxes. By the way, together with your child, you can simply make a robot figure in the growth of a baby and let him decorate your joint efforts.
What can be done from a cardboard box for a girl?
This is where the house comes to mind! And here parents can afford the most complex designs and the brightest colors. There is even a direction when furniture and home decor items are made from cardboard. What is stopping you from making a small house for a girl out of a box, so to speak, your own secluded place? If the baby takes the initiative and wants to do the decor on her own, this will only increase the value of such an activity. Or maybe your princess wants a real castle? After all, we already have a knight in cardboard armor! By the way, he can also build a cardboard fortress.
It is not necessary to make a big house in human height. For older girls, it is interesting to play with doll houses. And here you are not limited by anything. You can paste over the rooms with paper for wrapping gifts or find the remains of wallpaper after repair. And if the house will consist of several floors, your daughter will definitely thank you!
Another equally wonderful option that can be made out of the box is a kitchen or stove. With the help of cutouts and colored paint, you can make absolutely any stove, some use the same method to turn boxes into washing machines and dishwashers. In a word, you can make any small and large household appliances from boxes of various shapes and sizes. There are a lot of ideas and you just need to give the child the box itself, and he will certainly direct and tell you what you can come up with from it!