Cardboard Message Stamps

Print out your message using word processing software.

Flip it over and glue it down.

Paste cardboard strips about 1 cm thick over the lettering. I clipped the cardboard in between the fluting on the inside of the "o" to help ease it into a circle.

Let dry overnight. Away from curious hands!

I painted the stamp with regular acrylic paint. It took a few tries to get the cardboard to absorb enough paint to stamp relatively evenly, so don't give up if it doesn't come out perfectly the first time.

I think I'll go ahead and make name stamps for Isis and Electra using a different font, and then maybe we'll make an oversize set of the whole alphabet? Or maybe just imagine ourselves having the time to do that. Ha.

Cardboard Tray with Handles

As you can see from the pictures above this tray was born out of necessity. Now that Isis is fully mobile and on a rocket course towards walking, nothing in our home is safe from the jaws and terrible Chiclet teeth of this four legged little beast.

If you find the right box with the handle holes at the right height this tray is a one step process. I had to do a little gluing and combine the parts from two different boxes, but all in all not too bad.

The big plan is for Electra to use this tray for doing craft projects with little baby hazard pieces that require a large work surface to spread the materials out. I think it will also be good for doing puzzles, and already I love the whisk - away - ability it gives me when rascal number 2 is on the warpath. Maybe a splendid cupcake carrier as well?

Cardboard Hat and Mitten Organizer

Surprise! We're in Michigan; visiting grandma and grandpa, sledding down a custom built toddler ice luge, snowshoeing for pinecones, and building mustached snowMEN. A quick post for you about a hat and mitten organizer that I put up in the basement so that Electra could easily find and put on her own duds even while she was on vacation. I took two mugshots with the digital camera and then used photo editing software to convert them to black and white pictures. I printed the photos onto regular white paper, cut them out and glued them to the cardboard backing. I also traced Electra's hands onto the cardboard. The last step was cutting the cardboard to accommodate the hats and mittens. This project was really quick and fun. You could use tape or tacks to affix the organizer to a closet door or wall. Enjoy!

Cardboard and Plastic Netting Stationary Envelope

I I don't like to post projects that require tools that people don't have access too, but I thought that combination of materials might at least inspire those of you without a sewing machine to create something similar. The important thing about this envelope is that the netting lets you see what's inside- very important for both moms and toddlers alike!

This stationary envelope is made from a piece of cardboard and the netting that produce comes in. I first measured out a square of the netting and then traced a pattern, which included a flap on the top, onto the cardboard and cut it out.

I zigzag stitched the netting to the cardboard with a regular sewing machine (not industrial) and then I embellished the envelope with a few stripes of wash tape and a little picture of a dog that I cut from a magazine. This "kit" of materials will be a gift for a two year old friend of Electra's. I've included some homemade envelopes made from old maps, adhesive labels, two mini paper photo albums, some plain white greeting cards for decorating, blue adhesive dots and a few rolls of washi tape.

I like the way the netting expands and hugs the materials differently than a paper envelope. It will be fun to try making some more of these in different shapes and sizes to organize our own stationary supplies.

Cardboard's Strengths

Although this is probably not a project many of you are jumping to recreate, I did think you would find it interesting to see how strong a few little pieces of cardboard can be.

Electra has been wheeling around on her tricycle these days, and is keen on making her bike into more of a workhorse around the house. We have a wooden plant coaster that we have also been using as a kind of wheelie body board that makes a perfect trailer.  We just needed some kind of hitch so that Electra could easily take off the trailer when she was simply "cruising."

I measured and sketched, and then cut out this little device made of three pieces of cardboard glued together. It's surprisingly strong- it's able to pull a lot of weight (at least 10 kilos) without looking stressed. The trailer hooks up with some braided paper cord, which I used to illustrate the power of paper! I love continuing to be surprised by cardboard. It's free, recycled, and recyclable and offers so much possibility. I just find it so darn cool!  What do you do with your cardboard?

Cardboard Mini Photo Frames

Finally back from a blissful vacation in Indonesia, The Cardboard Collective is springing back to life. We've had sick kids, technology failure and just plain laziness plague us, but all excuses aside, we've got birthdays approaching that we need to deliver for.

Grandma D. is a teacher, painter, adventurer and all around photo-holic, so I know she'll appreciate this homemade twist on some of the photo gifts we've sent her in the past.

You can make one for yourself with the PDF patterns below. They are sized for 3x5 prints. You can use any kind of flat, durable cardboard for the frame, and re-purposed paper bags or magazine pages for the photo-holders. Simply trace the pattern fold it up, glue it together, and you've got it. Each side of the cardboard frame measures 6 and 3/8 in. by 4 and 1/2 in. I used a contrasting strip of washi tape to adjoin the two sides and add some color, but sometimes a bland mat and frame can make your pictures pop. You can also use the oval and square patterns on a standard sized envelope to make the frame holders. Just lop off one side of the envelope where you will insert the photo. Take the envelope apart, center the oval or rectangular pattern on it, trace, cut, and re-assemble.

       

Organize Yourself: Cardboard Library Pocket

I started gluing these library pockets in my sketch books and travel guides and quickly became addicted. They are a great addition to a Moleskin notebook too. I particularly like to use them on the front of the little cardboard covered notebooks I get from Muji. These notebooks are just the right size, inexpensive and great for sketching out ideas while the girls are playing on the playground every morning. My to do list stays front and center in the cozy little pocket and I can pull it out without having to delve into my sketchbook.

Cover them with interesting magazine pages, manga, paper bags, or other junk mail ephemera, and you've got a very classy place to keep your grocery list. No more forgetting the soy sauce!

For this project I recommend using the lightest weight cardboard you can get your hands on. Think "bone china" of cardboard. Re-purposed manilla folders would work great too.

To make the fabric covered pocket pictured at the top, I first traced the template onto cardboard and cut it out. Then I simply glued a scrap of kimono fabric to the pocket with watered down white glue and then painted over the top decoupage-style with the white glue  and water mixture so the fabric was entirely smooth and saturated. I let it dry overnight, cut off any remaining fabric, and then glued the pocket together and affixed it to the notebook. Easy.

Last minute stocking stuffer?

Click on the picture below for two sizes of free downloadable library pocket pdf templates.

Cardboard Washi Tape Holder

Now that we are getting deep into the Christmas crafting and gift wrapping, we've been pulling the washi tape out everyday. I used to keep our tapes in a box in the drawer, but I thought it would be great to have them organized in a way that I could easily see all the colors, as well as take them out and put them back without disturbing the whole lot.

Just plain old white glue should do the trick. You might try a couple of clothespins to keep everything together while it's drying.

You can use this template to create a washi tape holder that would fit in a drawer or sit on a shelf nicely. Of course you can decorate the whole darn thing with washi tape when you're done.

So do you remember life before washi tape? I don't.

Dressing up Hashi Stool with Recycled Cardboard Album Covers

During our walk around the neighborhood on recycling day yesterday, we stumbled across two bags full of vintage cardboard album covers. Beatles, Rolling Stones, Stevie Wonder and Roberta Flack to name a few. A major find in the world of a self proclaimed cardboard hoarder; I new we had to extend the life of this technicolor cardboard pile just a little bit longer.

After getting the album covers home, we separated the "hinged" covers from the ones that had a single pocket. I went through all the pocket album covers and cut the parts with colors and typography that I liked into strips of varying widths.

To achieve the glammed up version of the Hashi Stool, I simply glued the various strips of cardboard from the album covers onto the stool and then cut away the  excess with scissors. Then I piled books on top and let it dry.

We used the hinged album covers to create what looked like a house of cards. (reminiscent of my favorite duo Eames' House of Cards) The large size of the album covers made them easy for Electra, who is 2 and 1/2 easy to handle.

We also had fun making zigzag style fences; great for playing peekaboo with Isis.

Hashi Stool: Cardboard Chair Du Jour

We've been on a sort of hiatus this past week. Isis and Electra have both come down with massive head colds while I've been trying to get all our packages shipped to the States so that they make it back before Christmas. Pair those events with rain, 45 degree F temperatures, and bike and train as our sole modes of transport and at times the cookie was starting to crumble. The good news is that today the sun came out, we had an amazing day at the park, Isis cut her top front tooth (looks like her Christmas wish will come true) and we finished this awesome project that's been in the works for a while. Click through the slideshow for tips on how to make a Hoshi Stool for your kids.

(If you are reading this in Reader, click back to the site for the slideshow and tutorial.)

[slideshow]

This is a great project for anyone who wants to make something for a child by hand, but doesn't have a wood shop, knitting skills, or a sewing machine. You can put this project together in the most studio of apartments, and put your leftover cardboard out (or collect the cardboard that you need) on recycling day. We used a total of 32 layers, but you can vary the width based on your preference.

  

Click the pictures above to download free PDF patterns for the Hashi Stool

Nature's Opera Glasses (Leaf Peepers) & Fall Foliage Crowns

This week has been awash with what my mother-in-law calls Goldilocks days. Autumn days when you feel perfect in jeans and a sweatshirt and everything seems to sparkle. We made these "leaf peepers" to dress up a little for all the grandeur going on out in the woods. Gingkos aflame and momiji (maples) turning indescribable shades of fruit sherberts, we couldn't help but go for leaf collecting romp in the park.

The opera glasses are easy to put together. Start by tracing around your favorite pair of sunglasses onto cardboard that has widely corrugated channels. Make sure to orient the channels of the cardboard vertically so that you can insert a stick on the side once you have cut them out.

Add another inch to inch-and-a-half at the top of the glasses to make long enough channels to stick leaves into.

It worked fine with a large pair of curvy adult-sized sunglasses as well.

Insert a stick into one of the channels on one side.

We also made these simple crowns out of a strip of cardboard taped into a circle.

Happy Fall!

Oh My Deer: Cardboard Antlers

If you are anywhere around Michigan (USA) this week, don't go out and about with a pair of these on your head.

Like it or not, aunts, uncles, cousins and grandpas are out in their  hunting blinds right now hoping to bring home some four-legged game of the white-tailed variety.

For those of use city dwellers who are not out hunting and are limited to interacting with wildlife like birds, dogs, cats, rats and the occasional tanuki, we'll be snug in our beds on a cold November morning.

If you'd like to make your own pair of cardboard antlers, it's ideal to use light weight cardboard that is plain brown on both sides. I first cut a paper pattern from newsprint, then traced onto my cardboard with pencil. Be sure to allow for enough length at the base of the antlers to fold up a small cardboard tripod. Adhered with a little masking tape at the back, the cardboard loop allows you to string a ribbon or head band through the antlers and easily secure them to your head to help them stay in place.

You can add more horns to your antlers by making a cut at the base of the horn piece and at the place where you will insert the horn on the antlers.

So whether you are celebrating a trophy buck, curling up with a copy of Imogene's Antlers, or dressing up as our favorite reindeer this Christmas, I hope you enjoy making these cardboard antlers. With the pattern, I'm sure you could assemble this project in 10 minutes or less; less time than it would take you to go to the store and buy something similar and no extra burden on the planet when you pop them into the recycling box at the end of the season.

Tool: Off-set Handled Scissors

These scissors are a great new tool for cutting through cardboard. The off-set handle makes it easier to maneuver around corners and curves, and the wide openings in the handles provide for a roomy grip. The English translations for the packaging here in Japan always makes me chuckle. These scissors are definitely either made of hard materials, or will help you go after a hard(difficult) task!

On a scissors space-time continuum, the off-set handled scissors definitely rate as the best for getting through cardboard, even outperforming the "chicken boning shears." At the other end of the spectrum we have my sewing scissors, which I would never, ever use to cut cardboard, our household paper scissors, the delicate, but still useful for poking small holes embroidery scissors, and last but not least, wooden scissors. They actually do cut paper.

Cardboard Marquees

Another way to display cardboard beads, letters, pictures or shapes cut from cardboard.

To make the marquee I first decided to orient my cardboard with the fluting running vertically since most of the letters to be cut from cardboard run in the same direction.  I used one side of a box with the top and bottom flaps folded back to create a triangular base. Next, I  gently scored the the edges of the area I wanted to display and then started to gently peel away the top layer of paper to reveal the corrugated part of the cardboard below.

I used a chopstick to pry up some of the paper from between the flutes of the cardboard. It really helped to move the process along. (I would definitely enlist the help of any willing young spectators for this part.) If you are lucky enough to find some cardboard with the corrugated part exposed, then you can just glue it on top of the marquee base and get to work peeling the backs off of all the cardboard letters or shapes that you are using.

Make sure that your letters have the same size fluting as the marquee base if you want them to hold their place securely.

Just a piece of tape (masking tape, washi tape, or paper tape) to secure the marquee base at the back and you are ready to start crafting your own personal message to the world.

Strings of Things

Although the leaves have not quite begun changing here in Tokyo, we got a jump start on leaf collecting when we made Electra's big fat cardboard book booster seat / leaf press. The other day we opened up the book and took a look at our leaves. I happened to be reupholstering our couch at the time, so I had button thread in my sewing machine in addition to settings that made for the longest stitch possible. We ran stitches through the leaves to create a chain to hang in our window. I have a thick denim needle in the machine that created large perforations in the leaves but they seem to be holding up all right. I must admit they are so beautiful to look at that I want to don a fuzzy sweater and sip spiced apple cider all day long. Isis loves to look at them and I often catch her rearing up on her knees like a mongoose sniffing the air for an opportunity to pull them down. I'm sure she fancies them as the perfect floss for her two new baby teeth. Here's a picture of our cardboard beads hung from a stick as a mobile. The thin wide beads were an experiment that remind me of Alexander Calder's work.

Alpha Beads: Learning to read in English or Japanese

My husband just started taking Japanese classes in the evenings after work, so everyone in the house now is learning to speak in one way or another. After stringing cardboard beads onto long strands to make mobiles, I started cutting out letters to make alphabet beads in both English and Japanese. Japanese has two phonetic alphabets called hiragana and katakana in addition to kanji characters (derived from Chinese characters). One of my biggest challenges when learning to read Japanese hiragana was recognizing the slightly different ways of writing the hiragana. I thought this activity of getting all the slightly different looking letters together would be a good exercise in recognizing environmental print (albeit out of context) for both my husband and my 2 1/2 year old.

Most of the flutes in the cardboard run vertically through the letters and create multiple channels for threading.

I have quite an unruly cache of cardboard accumulating in our small apartment and we have rounded up a good little collection of letters and hiragana.

The only materials we used for these picture stand-ups were cardboard boxes from the grocery store, sturdy scissors, (We have chicken boning scissors from my father, who uses them on the farm for their original purpose.) paper tape (more beautiful than plastic tape) and pipe cleaners or wire.

Use a strip of cardboard and some tape to make a little tripod on the back.

You can make mobiles, spell out words, or make strings of letters with needle and thread. How about a rudimentary version of Scrabble or some other kind of game? I served this mekan (pronounced mee-kon) (Japanese for tangerine) for breakfast. Fruit + chopstick + carboard beads. Mmmmmm.

Tokyo Toy Museum

[slideshow] {If you are reading this in google reader, make sure to click back to the blog to view the slideshow}

On Saturday we went down to one of my favorite places for children in Tokyo; The Tokyo Toy Museum. Housed in a renovated elementary school building in central Tokyo, TTM is home to a superb collection of toys, both traditional and modern, from around the world. The museum has several floors with rooms and play spaces devoted to different age groups. This past weekend the museum hosted a matsuri (festival) showcasing retail toys from a variety of special toy makers, toy making workshops, activities, games and performances.

One of the highlights for us was visiting the new, or at least new since our last visit, 0-3 years room, filled with beautiful wood and cloth toys. The space felt both serene and joyful at the same time. How do they do that?

Electra loved the sculptural pieces of cedar that had been carved and sanded until soft, into earthy slides and tunnels. Isis was fascinated by the fabric balls and otedama (Japanese bean bags) that had wandered into the white concave space she spent most of her time exploring.

I am again overwhelmed with inspiration after our visit to Tokyo Toy Museum, and am hoping to post about many, many TTM inspired cardboard playthings soon!

Sandwiches are Beautiful ..... Sandwich Books are Fine!

The latest addition to our cardboard book library; a very delicious book about how to make a B.L.T. (Bacon, lettuce and tomato) sandwich. This book was easy to make and I had help from Electra painting the pages. We used the same process that I wrote about earlier in the How to Make Cardboard Books post. I used a type of tape made from white paper that could be painted for the binding. I touched up the spots where the book was adjoined after the whole thing was assembled. The coolest part was finding white cardboard for the bread that gave the look of "brown crust" when you cut the pages out. This is literally a recipe book for getting your child or toddler cooking in the kitchen!

Mmmmmm cardboard!

Big Fat Cardboard Book Booster Seat

When Isis took over the highchair, Electra needed a booster seat so she could sit in one of the big chairs at the kitchen table. We put together a big fat cardboard book for her to sit on. We found a box with a Japanese castle on it, so you could even say this seat is throne-like.

I sewed an elastic band to keep the pages from opening up when she was getting into and out of the chair. The beauty of it? It doubles as a leaf press!

How to Make Cardboard Books

The first cardboard book I ever made was for Electra's first birthday. It was filled with photos of her learning to walk and of places we had seen on day trips around Tokyo. Electra loved the book so much that she pulled off most of the pictures and peek-a-boo flaps I had pasted in. The beauty of the book was that we could easily add new pictures and tape to make any repairs. A second book ensued filled with photos of Electra helping out around the house doing things like sweeping, peeling garlic, putting groceries away and watering plants. It was a wordless book that opened up an incredible amount of dialogue (for a 1 1/2 year old) about our day to day life. We still love to look at our cardboard books together now, 1 year later and we have added many many more cardboard books to our library.

How to Make Cardboard Books:

Cut your cardboard pages and cover.