Crafty-Crafted.com Craft for children and anything nice

We first did this toilet paper roll octopus back in 2010 with the elder brother.

Today we did the same with the little brother but skipped the painting part so it is not too lengthy. 

You’ll need:
1 pcs toilet paper roll
1 pcs coloured foam
2 pcs googly eyes
Hole punch
Glue

Watch this video on how your toddler can make an octopus out of a toilet paper roll. If you intend to use kitchen roll, you’ll have to cut it short accordingly. 

My youngest boy is now 3 years old. It is important to work on his soft motor skills. At this age, I pay more attention to his finger muscles and hand strengthening as it is crucial in helping him to hold the pencil when he starts going to school.

Stamping is one of the best activity to work those finger muscles as he will be utilising all four fingers and his thumb to hold the stamp. It helps in his coordination and when I make it a little more challenging by getting him to draw something out of the circle he stamped, it becomes a bilateral activity that activates the non-dominant hand (to hold the paper) as well as his creativity in painting his thoughts on paper.

Watch this video on how he started by stamping random circles and proceeded to paint a spider, lollipop as well as a goldfish from just a circle.

My boys have too many cars. They are everywhere. We built a multi-level toy car garage using large toilet paper roll last weekend.

Toilet Paper Roll Multi Level Toy Car Garage

All we need are many huge toilet paper rolls and a thick board to support it at the back.

Paste double-layered tapes on the rolls and stick them together.

Glue a thick board at the back so the cars won’t fall off. My little boy had fun keeping his cars in the garage. I think it’s time to make him a bigger garage with more levels 🙂

After a long hiatus, we are finally ready to craft again as my little boy is turning two next month. Let’s make a toilet paper roll apple tree today. 

We’ll need a toilet paper roll or a kitchen towel roll, brown tempera paste, green and red crepe paper. 

Paint the toilet paper roll. Do not cut it into half yet as it is easier for your toddler to hold it if it is still whole. 

Tear and crumple the green crepe paper. 

Smear glue all over a construction paper.

Paste the green crepe paper. 

Add red crepe paper as the apple. 

Cut the toilet paper roll half and paste as the tree trunk. 

The toilet paper roll apple tree is done 🙂

Chinese New Year is just one and a half month away so let’s start making CNY decorations using red packets.

For this Red Packet lantern, we’ll be needing TP Rolls too for the core.

Wrap the TP Roll with red craft paper.

Using only the front part of the red packet wrapper, cut lines down leaving a cm uncut on the top and bottom part.

Paste it on the TP Roll and decorate with dangling ornament.

Check out the rest of our Chinese New Year decor collections:

1) Red packet Ball Lantern

2) Red Packet Ancient Coin Lantern

3) Ang Bao Gold Fish

4) Lucky Star Lantern

5) Red Packet Toilet Paper Roll Fire Cracker

6) Chinese Paper Cut – SPRING

7) Fortune Cookie Fridge Magnet

8 ) Red Packet Sea Shell Tree Ornament

9) Red Packet Fish Lantern

10) Red Packet Fan Tree Ornament

11) Red Packet Fish Tree Ornament

12) Fingerprint Cherry Blossom

13) Toilet Paper Roll Orange

14) Chinese New Year Fan

15) Angry Bird Ang Pow Wheel of Fortune

16) Ang Pow Koi Fish

17) Personalised Ang Pow Packet

18) Angpow Carousel Lantern

19) Angpow Flower Lantern

Inspired by FamilyFun’s dyed egg scuba diver craft, we improvised and came out with this:

Snorkeling pencil holder

We’ll need a large toilet paper roll, a sauce cup, a straw and a rubber band for this craft.

Glue the toilet paper roll onto a cardboard.

Paint the toilet paper roll.

Draw circles. Use paper punch to punch out smaller circles out of black craft foams. Paste.

Paste everything onto the toilet paper roll and let dry.

Little cute toilet paper rolls ready for some snorkeling fun!

Watch the full video tutorial here:

I’ve always loved the fine art of pottery. I wish to try pottery with the students but I can’t find a good enough clay yet.

In the meantime, remember the kids’ paper twisting project previously? Refer to it here. Let’s get them to train their ‘pottery’ skills using crepe paper instead 🙂

We will need a large toilet paper roll. Glue a cardboard at the base and let dry.

We’ll need lots of strips of crepe paper.

Twisting crepe paper is good to train the little kids’ motor skills and coordination.

Apply glue on the toilet paper roll and paste the twisted crepe paper, rolling and repeating with new strips of paper until you’ve covered the entire roll.

The kids busy with their masterpiece.

The completed crepe paper pencil holder.

The kiddo decorated it to be a colourful alien bunny ^_^

Another kid did this creative BEE!

Aren’t they beautiful? I’d be very proud to have them on my working station 🙂

Easter is just around the corner.

Thanks to www.family.go.com, we found this cute way to decorate our Easter Eggs 🙂

Watch this video on how we transformed an ordinary egg into a cute Mickey Mouse! <3

It’s Valentine’s Day in a few minutes time. We did a Valentine craft today. It is a Valentine’s Torch.

While we were thinking of what we wanted to project on the wall, I asked my boy what he knows about Valentine’s Day. His answer is simply CUPID! I do not know how to draw a cupid. Thank goodness we have a printer that we can simply google for a picture of cupid and print it out!

To see how you can turn these printouts:

Into a torch shown below:

You’ll need to check out this short 4 mins video of how my boy turned a simple printout into an amazing torch! 🙂 The only thing I did was to cut the objects out for him. Enjoy!

Let’s make a bird today. Not an angry bird but a cute one 😀

Toilet Paper Roll Bird

Paint a toilet paper roll any colour to your liking.

Paint your thumb white and stamp as the white eye. Paint your pointer black and stamp again as the eyeball 😀

Cut two triangles out of orange construction paper for the beak

Spread PVA glue all over the toilet roll

Now it’s the fun part – Sticking feathers onto the bird.

Instead of buying feathers from craft store, I bought a brand new feather duster and stripped the feathers from it instead. It’s much cheaper that way!

The kids with their bird 😀

Halloween is around the corner and it’s time to make some creepy crafts 😀

Toilet Paper Roll Halloween Bats

Cut a line through a toilet paper roll to open it.

Cut wings and two ears out of another toilet paper roll

There, the bat is already forming. Now all we need to do is paint it black.

Paint the toilet paper roll, wings and ears black

Paint your thumb white

Stamp your painted thumb on the toilet paper roll as the eyes. Paint your pointer black and stamp as the eyeball.

Glue the wings and ears

Toilet Paper Roll Halloween Bat 🙂

I did a craft stick stationery holder with my student earlier this year. Refer to it here. Back then my boy was too young to make that.

Today, he is ready to make his own craft stick stationery holder and requested for a rainbow theme 😀

Rainbow craft stick stationery holder

Paint the craft sticks with your favourite colours

Let them dry

Paste the toilet paper roll onto a piece of hard board and cut

Spread glue all over

Stick the craft sticks all around the toilet paper roll

Let it dry and decorate as you wish

I tied ribbon around it to hold the craft sticks together better 🙂

Wanna see what I did? Here…

Smiley face craft stick stationery holder 🙂

We saw some old cardboard boxes and kitchen paper rolls today and decided to make a castle out of it 😀

Kitchen paper roll castle

We use some old box and kitchen paper rolls

Cut one end of the kitchen paper rolls to look like the top of a castle tower.

Draw a door and cut until you are able to ‘open’ it

Cut the kitchen paper roll so that you can slide the cardboard in

Slide the cardboards into the kitchen paper rolls.

Personalized it as you wish. My boy insisted of pasting ‘bricks’ on the castle  😀

One of his favourite craft work at the moment, his very own castle 😀

Look, he is THAT happy! Seeing him happy makes ME happy 😀

We are in the festive spirit and will be making oil lamp today 🙂

Toilet Paper Roll Oil Lamp

Cut half a large toilet paper roll

Cut a triangle out of small toilet paper roll

Paste onto the larger toilet paper roll

Cut ‘flames’ out of coloured construction paper.

Paint the toilet paper roll inside out

Use hair dryer to expedite the drying process.  Click here for more of craft tips and tricks.

Paste the flame and the oil lamp is done 🙂

We are going to make an abstract art using toilet paper roll today 🙂

Abstract art

Dip a toilet paper roll into tub of paint

Stamp onto an art block, repeat until you’ve covered the entire surface

My boy loves to wipe away the paint before dipping the roll into different colour tubs 🙂

The kids love doing this!

We are still in the mushroom craze so that is what we’ll be making today 🙂

Paper plate toilet paper roll mushroom

Paint the toilet paper roll brown

Cut a line to the middle of the plate and glue as shown above.

Paint the paper plate red.

Varnish the paper plate with PVA Glue.

The paper plate should be sticky. Paste cotton on it and let dry. It will have a nice shine once dried.

Spread glue on the rim of the toilet paper roll

Plate the paper plate on the toilet paper roll

Paper plate mushrooms

The kids and their mushrooms 🙂

Meow! My boy loves cat and he’ll get excited each time we do a cat craft. Today, we did a cat pencil holder using a large toilet roll.

Toilet Roll Cat Pencil Holder

You’ll need a large toilet paper roll and egg carton as the ears.

Glue the ears to the toilet paper roll and let dry

Glue the toilet paper roll onto a hard board

Once dry, trim off the excess board

Paint it, inside out.

Twist a newspaper

Wrap it with masking tape

Glue cotton around it and paste as the tail

Dab your brush on the cotton to paint it

Paste eyes, nose and draw whiskers and your pencil holder made of entirely recycled materials is done! 😀

He loves it!

Row, row, row your boat,
Gently down the stream..
If you see a crocodile,
Don’t forget to SCREAM! 😀

Alligator or crocodile.. call it what you want as we are making one today 🙂

Egg carton alligator

Glue 3 toilet paper rolls together or you may just use kitchen roll.

Glue the egg carton on it and let dry.

Paint the alligator green

Paint the eyes white

Paint the eyeball black. Paste the legs and teeth and the alligator is done 🙂

Feel a little like a pirate today? Let’s make a spyglass out of kitchen paper roll 😀

Kitchen paper roll spyglass

Paint a kitchen roll black

Cut strips out of aluminium foil

Paste

Spread some glue on the rim of the roll

Place a cellophane sheet on the rim

Cut the excess sheet

The spyglass is ready! Aye! Aye!

We had a very fun time making this giraffe today 😀

Toilet Paper Roll Giraffe

You will need four toilet paper rolls and one kitchen paper roll

Draw a giraffe head and cut. Draw another slightly bigger head, cut and paste to the smaller head.

You’ll get a giraffe head as shown above.

Cut the remaining rolls as shown above.

Glue them all together to get the giraffe.

Paint the giraffe yellow

While waiting for the yellow paint to dry, cut a strip of paper for the giraffe’s mane and paint it brown.

Paint the spots brown

Glue the eyes, mane and tail.

The giraffe is done 😀

Crafty-Crafted Friends, Our Little Corners submitted an equally awesome giraffe craft too.

Click here for the full instruction.