Easy Cardboard Tube Robot for Kids

Welcome back to Kids Crafts and this week’s cardboard tube robot!! I am a huge huge HUGE fan of cardboard tube crafts.. mainly because we have them in abundance in our house (*cough* I blame the Englishman). This little Toilet Paper Roll Robot is a perfect little Crafts for Boys idea!

We actually made this robot last year and it forms part of my Time On Your Hands ebook. But I decided to share him with you today. This little guy has once again inspired hours of fun in our house. Which is great for those long long holidays. He also forms part of our home made “puppet theatre”, where we have a range of wonderful characters.

Materials: The Cardboard Tube Roll, metallic or blue paint, silver corrugated card or tin foil, scissors, paper, googly eyes, pen, sequins, glue, elastic band to keep everything in place whilst drying

I used metallic acrylic paint, but you can replace it with tin foil or wrapping paper or ordinary paint, which you then varnish if you want to!

Step 1 Paint two strips at the top and bottom of the roll around 2cm wide in the metallic colour (or colour the whole roll, it doesn’t matter really!) – as per the photo above.

Step 2 Paint some plain paper in the same colour, so you can later use it for the arms. You will need to paint both sides
Step 3 Once dry, cut out a piece of corrugated card and glue it onto the roll. You could also use some contrasting plain card, tin foil or felt

Step 4 Stick on googly eyes, a mouth (white paper & pen drawing) and sequins for buttons

Step 5 Make the arms: these are “Witches Ladders” and consist of two strips of paper folded over each other. Glue them at right angles to begin with and then take turn folding them