Thursday, May 10, 2012

How To Make A Cardboard Stage and Own-Gift Awkwardness


Here is a project Emily did all by herself. I didn't even know she was working on it, until it was finished. My first thought when I saw it was, "Hey...... I hope that wasn't one of the boxes I was saving..... no, I think it looks like it came from the surplus pile. Phew." Then, newly reassured, I took a closer look to figure out what it was. 

It's a cardboard stage for Barbies. It is a cardboard box, with a staircase on one side. Simple and very effective.

I am very impressed with her staircase. She used her low-temperature glue gun to make it.

And she even remembered the under-support so the whole thing doesn't cave in under the weight of Barbies, rake-thin though they may be.

Unrelated, I made a super-simple treasure chest for Jenna. 

Jenna is planning an elaborate Mother's Day treasure hunt, and asked for a wooden chest she saw in Michaels. I was too lazy to drive out and buy what would essentially be my own present (funny), so I made her one instead. Still funny, but at least this one was free.


Here are some extra photos of the construction details.


Later, Jenna and Kate painted it.

Much later, I discovered what really counts as "treasure" to small children :)



11 comments:

  1. You can get a low temperature glue gun??? Where?? My daughter is frightened of my glue gun. Those stairs are very very impressive.

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    1. We got ours from walmart. It is a small gun i.e. it takes the mini-glue sticks. I suspect you can get these low-temp guns from many other places, too.

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  2. My heart "squoze" when I saw the treasure!!!!

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  3. Aww, what a special treasure! You should feel honored! :)

    I didn't know about the low-temp gun, either!

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  4. You are such an inspiration to anyone. Toys for children can be so expensive, what you make out of cardboard is great and Ibet your children love it. It just goes to show what a little imagination and time can do. Fantastic blog. If Im lucky enough to have children I will definately be using some of your ideas.

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  5. You can still burn yourself on a low temp glue gun, we know! Not as bad though, and it only happened once! The glue gets stringier more quickly, but we use ours all the time. You can find a bag of refills at the dollar store :)
    Happy Mother's Day to you, LiEr, you help me to be a better mother and I am thankful that you're one of my mom friends.
    I am also helping with my Mother's Day gift. We're tilling, adding compost, and planting our garden, an 8x16 plot the neighbor graciously offered to us.

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  6. Oh the treasure is so cute as is your cardboard chest.

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  7. My five year old grabs any box that comes into the house and fills them with the same type of sleeping " treasures". she then spends hours decorating the boxes with fabric, paper, stickers - hours of fun.

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  8. I love the built-in stair supports! Very nice!

    What does Emily use to cut cardboard?

    Love the treasure box - and that you made one rather than drive out and buy one. My choice any day (although mine would not look this nice).

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    1. Kitchen scissors. These are the big metal ones that have the plastic handles, and sometimes slightly serrated blades. The serratedness is not important. I think they might also be called utility scissors and Dave has bought a pair from hardware stores in the past. The kids (even Kate) have learnt that the Fiskars kids scissors are useless, no matter how sharp, because they are just too small to get a decent leverage. And even the Fiskars orange-handled adult scissors are poor. I've broken those before (may be generic brand, though) on cardboard. Nothing against Fiskars, but I'm just mentioning that here to make the point that it's not the branded-vs-generic quality that's in question: it's the style/size of scissors that allows it to work or not.

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    2. Thank you for celebrating your kids.

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