Recycled Robot

We went to a birthday party last weekend and the birthday girl was kind enough to give us fun party favors that came in these great Pottery Barn Kids boxes. Now, being a crafty sort my mind was racing with all the things we could do with them. I thought they would make a fun recycled robot. First I gave the kids the boxes to play with. They stacked them and knocked them down over and over. When they got bored with that, we started working on our recycled robot.

First A and B worked hard to paint the boxes.

The tray helped to contain some of the mess but we still ended up with a good deal of paint on smocks and hands, not to mention on the glass table.  Here's a tip for those with glass tables: wipe up the paint as soon as you notice it instead of when the activity is over.  It's a lot harder to get off when it dries.

B painted one box and A painted two.  She always seems to have more stamina for these kinds of activities.  When the boxes dried, I used hot glue to stick them together.  Epic fail!  The glue dried before I could get the other boxes on.  So I moved to plan B - packing tape.  I imagine there are a number of adhesives that could have been used, but packing tape was handy.  Here's our new friend all taped together.

We decided he needed some arms so I went to my pantry o' recycled goods and got some paper towel rolls.  I save a bunch for craft activities.  My poor husband will go and open the cabinet to get something, and a bunch of paper towel and toilet paper rolls will fall out all over him.  Now he will be attacked by two less.  

The girls decorated the robot's arms but this time used markers since I had already cleaned the paint off the  table.  :-)

I used the packing tape to attach the arms, though you could use brads or any number of things to attach them so they could even move up and down.  My poor girls just get immobile arms.  It's all good since he doesn't have legs anyway as B was quick to point out.  But he's a pretty handsome robot torso if I do say so myself.

This guy still needed a face.  Hey, I deprived him of moving arms and legs, the least I could give him is a face so he can express his displeasure.  I had some foam stickers I purchased from the dollar store, and we used those for the face.  Okay, I phoned it in on the face.  Here's the deal.  I had two 3 year olds whining "Is he ready yet?" over and over, and while I had visions of doing some cool cut outs or using bottle caps, I just slapped on some foam pieces and called it a day.  If you have older/less whiny kids it would be fun to let them be creative with the face.  You can even add some yarn hair.  Who says a robot torso can't rock some glam hair?

The robot was a big hit.  Here are A and B enjoying their new friend.

And here is Little C ripping his face off.  Yup, he is now faceless.  

Poor robot torso.  We hardly knew ye.

For more recycled crafts check out:

Bottle Print Flowers

Want more Mess?
Subscribe via Email or follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, or Google+