1 Our stash!
2 Homemade light sabers, a favorite activity at my boys Star Wars party!! See link below to Zakka Life, the blog where I first spotted this idea.
3 My little Darth Vader with his paper towel tube double-bladed light saber.
4 After visiting a museum with some impressive totem poles, my son made his own. I glued a tube to a square cardboard base and he did the rest.
5 Bangles made with slices of paper towel tubes are a fun and easy party craft! Link below.
6 I LOVE this cardboard dessert stand made by Lorraine, a crafty and clever mom (see link to her blog, Ikat Bag, below). She also made...
7 ....these homemade wooden donuts!!! She used unfinished wooden wheels and painted them with her daughters.
8 Rockets made by Gael Towey's son out of shipping tubes, another great material to save! How-to link below.
9 Where the Wild Things Are characters, on Matsutake blog, link below. So simple and sweet!
10 We made this car garage out of cardboard boxes Toilet paper tube column (on left) provided structural support!
11 Accessories for our car garage: toilet paper tube vacuum and raisin box air pump.
12 Another view of the garage.
13 Toilet paper tube owls from the Natural Kids blog. (link below)
14 Paper towel tubes make perfect turrets for castles and toy house chimneys. This castle made by Ann Wood is SO beautiful!!! (link below)
15 With a square of wax paper and a rubber band, your kids can make a homemade kazoo. See link below for how-to.
16 Tiny planters for seed starting from NatureMoms blog. (link below)
17 My son made this house tree combo. A slit cut in the top is an easy way to attach the paper foliage
18 Un-crafted tubes are fun too!
All winter I hoard paper towel and toilet paper tubes, bottlecaps and cardboard. The tubes are my favorite. I collect them in a string bag hanging behind a closet door. If it gets too be too much I bring them to school and give them to the art teacher who collects them too. Tubes are the perfect blank (and in this case, 3-D) canvas with infinite possibilities. When summer arrives and we have more time for crafts, our stash comes in handy for pirate telescopes, car-making, castle building, totem poles, and anything else we can come up with!
Check out these links for more informaton:
- Zakka Life's toilet paper tube light sabers
- Paper towel tube bracelets
- Ikat Bag blog's cardboard cake stand and homemade donuts
- Cardboard tube rockets
- Halloween Where the Wild Things Are toilet paper tube crafts
- Nature Mom blog's toilet paper tube owls
- Ann Wood's cardboard castle
- Toilet paper tube kazoos
- Nature Mom's seed starting tube planters
Other things we've created with the tubes:
- napkin rings
- Easter egg holders (decorate a 11/2" slice of a tube--makes cute egg "placecards"!)
- periscopes and spy glasses in cardboard box playhouses
- marble chutes (cut the tubes in half the long way)
What have you made with them?
