Toilet Roll Crafts

Kids crafts can be surprisingly expensive but if you’re happy to have a rummage through your recycling box then it doesn’t have to be that way. With a weekend filled with grey, cold days we took refuge indoors this weekend and my kids created five different animals using toilet roll crafts. Lots of crafting tends to go hand in hand with lots of mess so to try and keep this as enjoyable as possible (as opposed to my panicking that my three-year-old would accidentally paint the walls again) we tried where possible not to use paints to decorate our toilet rolls. An added bonus of this is that our toilet roll crafts were dry really quickly and ready for the kids to play which kept them busy for the rest of the day.

Toilet Roll Craft: Bat

As huge fans of Batman, my kids are great believers that bat crafts are not just for Halloween. To make a toilet roll bat pinch the top of the toilet roll to make it into a flat line and then push the middle bit down to make the bats ears shapes. Cut out some bat wings from black card and then glue these onto the back of your bat using PVA glue. All that’s left to do now is draw on the bats face using felt tip pens.
Toilet Roll Craft: Butterfly

As soon as I saw these sparkly gems in a local toy shop I knew my daughter would love them for decorating with. To make our butterfly we cut the wing shapes out of coloured card and stuck them onto the back of a toilet roll, my daughter then glued on some googly eyes and with a bit of help cut off a piece of pipe cleaner which we stuck inside the toilet roll using sellotape to make the antennae. This toilet roll craft design will keep the little ones busy for a while. Once the basics were all done she smothered the wings in PVA glue and got decorating. It might not be a perfectly symmetrical butterfly but she adored it and has played with it every day since.
Toilet Roll Craft: Lion

These lions are a fun way for kids to practice their scissor skills as well as looking cute. We cut circles out of yellow card and my kids drew the lions faces in the middle with felt tips, they then cut into the circles to make a mane for their lion, at three years old my daughter needed a bit of a hand turning her circle while she was cutting but at six years old my son was fine. They then stuck their lion’s heads onto the toilet roll bodies with my son adding paws for his lion and a tail around the back.
Toilet Roll Craft: Ladybirds

My kids started by making their ladybirds faces by using felt tips or sticking on googly eyes and then they stuck on pipe cleaner antennae using sellotape on the inside of the cardboard tube. To make the wings we cut out a large circle from red card and then they cut it in half. At this point, I braved the black paint, which we put in a little pot so it could easily be removed afterwards, and the kids used finger painting to make the black dots on the wings. The wings were then glued to the back of the ladybirds.
Toilet Roll Craft: Robots

This is the only one of the toilet roll crafts that I got involved with too, making a toilet roll robot alongside my son while his sister had a nap. We wrapped sequin mesh around the cardboard rolls securing it in place with sellotape and then made small holes in the side of the tubes that we could push pipe cleaner arms and legs through. To make the faces we stuck on googly eyes and used a bit from one of the pipe cleaners to make mouths and then we made buttons using black card and gold and silver pens which we stuck on too, using PVA glue.