citymade

Egg Carton Week

Our first egg carton re-purposing project is a jewelry box.  We took a small shoe box and lined the bottom with a piece of felted wool.  Next, we cut an egg carton to fit to rest on the top of the shoe box.  The outside of the shoebox is decoupaged with decorative paper.  

To complete kid week we wanted to show you that, if you give children materials, they can come up with ideas on their own.  Save items such as coffee cans, shoe boxes, toilet paper tubes and egg cartons for kids to create with.  For example, Anna made a pair of binoculars from two toilet paper tubes and a piece of string.  Children are so imaginative and re-purposing items seems to come very natural to them. 

Oh, and speaking of egg cartons, we will show you several ideas for re-purposing them for the rest of this week.

Kids Desk Set

This desk set was made from cereal boxes, Crystal Light boxes, and a frosting container.  We used acrylic paint and cut animals out from wrapping paper to decorate the boxes.  Kids enjoy playing with “office supplies” such as envelopes, tape, glue, and notebooks and it is nice to have them readily available to them in a special place. 

Ribbon Streamers

This was a fun activity for our kids today…and easy.  We started by cutting a hole in a plastic lid (we are not able to recycle lids).  Next we tied pieces of ribbon around the loop.  The girls had fun dancing outside with their ribbon streamers.

Toy Cupboards

This is a fun way to store all of those little toys that children collect.  We used two cardboard boxes, wrapped in paper. Then we painted the tops, put a brad fastener into a bottle cap for a handle and attached it to the top.

You can use a variety of box sizes and decorate them many different ways.  The kids can even help decorate. 

Inboxes

This was another really simple project.  We stacked three cereal boxes and taped them together with packing tape.  Next, we covered the stacked boxes with wrapping paper and used white duct tape around the edges. 

This is a nice way to store magazines, papers, or artwork. 

Kids week project #2-Marble Run.

So easy and fun and the kids will have a great time putting it together and using it!

We took paper towel tubes and toilet paper tubes and cut, covered and glued magnets on them. Then arranged them on the refrigerator and watched the marbles fly down!

James says, “It’s a good past time when your Mom says you can’t eat, so you just play on the fridge”.

It’s Spring Break!

Sadly that doesn’t mean that we have a trip to Cancun planned or even some warm spring weather.  What is does mean is that we have all five children home with us this week.  With that being said we have decided to make this Kid Week.  All of our re-purposing projects for the week will be child-focused.   

Our first project uses an old Super Nintendo that had just broken.  We took four of the games and hot glued them onto a sturdy cardboard box.  We also broke open the Nintendo and used the buttons for the sides of the box.  This box is the perfect size to store pencils or other art supplies on a child’s desk. 

Next we took one of the controllers apart and removed the chord.  Using hot glue again we glued the controller onto a mint tin.  This is great for storing paperclips, erasers or any other “treasures” a child might have.

Now that we have the invites and treats, it’s time to decorate.

We are having our “Dance Party” themed party, so we made a banner of silver and black. The Fabric came from a bridesmaid skirt (there are other uses for those). We cut them into triangles with pinking shears and sewed them onto a piece of hem tape. For some added pizazz, we sewed a CD onto the middle.