Do you have a few of these in your house at the moment?

Toilet rolls are a fantastic craft resource that we often overlook and just throw away.  We have put on our thinking caps, and have developed three colourful, easy, fun, and CHEAP projects for you to try this week. 

Toilet roll art three ways! Lets gather as many rolls as we can, and get started!

First job is to paint them – bright, colourful, inside and outside of each roll. It is kind of a messy job – but the kids will really enjoy it! Paint them/ splotch them, splatter them, dip them – whichever way tickles your fancy. If you want to stick to just earthy tones, or cool tones, or pastels, or monochrome – that would look cool too!

Allow them all to dry – the kids can go jump on the trampoline, scooter around the block a few times while the paint dries.

When dry, squeeze them flat, and cut them into strips – thick, thin, crooked, wavy – doesn’t really matter – a mixture of widths is great. You will now have an awesome selection of colourful little rings.

IDEA #1 – Funky necklace – you need some pipe cleaners, and extra beads or buttons for this one.

This is a fun threading activity – just twist about 3 pipecleaners together to make one long pipecleaner, and thread about 10 of the colourful rings onto the pipecleaners – along with a few beads. Voila – wearable art.

IDEA #2 – 3D SHAPE ART – you will need some PVA glue + a piece of A4 card.

What is cool about these little circles, is that you can shape them by pinching/folding – make a square/ a triangle/ an eye shape, a heart etc etc. play around with them and make a series of different shapes.

Drizzle PVA glue all over your base A4 card, and arrange and glue all of your shapes into position – it looks cool if each shape is touching another shape (no big spaces) – and just lay flat to dry overnight.

Cool 3D colourful art.

IDEA #3 – GROOVY MOBILES

You will need some pipecleaners, or string for this one also – and a hole punch. Some extra beads/ buttons also cool, and a stick to hang it onto – perhaps hunt around the garden to find the right one. We used a piece of cane.

Use the hole punch to punch holes into a bunch of your circles – the kids love doing this part – in fact you will have to pull the hole punch off them to make them stop!

Now just get busy with threading/twisting/looping the circles/shapes together – no rules here – just have fun playing with the shapes.

Now work at assembling together into a mobile – hang your shapes off a stick – think about what will look good – I like it when one side hangs long, and one side a bit shorter. Attach to your stick – give it all a bit of a shake to make sure nothing will fall off.

I really love these projects – I love seeing the transformation of an everyday object destined for rubbish, into really cool SIMPLE art projects. 

I love colour too – so the random nature of the painted shapes is super cool.

We would love to see your toilet roll projects – tag us in your projects so we can see!

Happy creating.

Tracy x