Making Mr and Mrs Frosty

I've been looking at Styrofoam craft on Pinterest and I realise this is far from a new idea.

There are a lot of people out there getting wildly creative with Styrofoam balls, but these two lovely snow people where actually designed and made by a five-year-old.  Based on her only real snow people she left outside the Paris airport hotel, She-Who-Worships-Pink wanted to give them all the things she didn't have to hand in Paris..

Paris Airport's hotel entrance had no sticks, scarves stones or carrots.. 

Pinkster was hell-bent on authenticity, rather than fancy which is a quirk about her that I rather fancy. She hunted for just the right size and shaped sticks in our garden, to make their arms, and she rolled up tiny bits of card and coloured them with an orange felt pen to make teeny-tiny carrot noses.

I helped with the structural issues like getting the heads and noses to stay on (with he help of barbeque skewers and a hot glue gun) and I knitted the scarves. We made the hats together under her critical guidance and my glue gun. Pinkster was in charge of hat painting, googly eye gluing and all the finishing touches; most of which involved a black felt pen!


So our Christmas craft project number two is completed; using 2 sizes of Styrofoam balls, a BBQ skewer, empty coffee capsules, toilet roll centres, common garden variety sticks, googly eyes, heavy paper and a bit left-over knitting yarn.

Deck the Halls with boughs of loo-rolls

Fa la la la la, la la la lah!

We do love a good toilet roll, Miss Pink and I.
But paper towel rolls can be even better seeing as theyre longer..

You may have seen my previous post on making an orchard out of toilet roll centres; I don't know who came up with the idea of doing a Christmas tree, but here it is in all its glory.

Because of our craft-obsession, She Who Worships Pink  and I save everything: bits of wool, ribbon, old un-sticky stickers, pretty stuff we peel off greeting cards, pipe-cleaners, feathers, you name it. I also regularly hit the craft shops to stock up, and all of this stuff gets stored in old take-away containers in her desk.

This kind of stuff comes in handy when youre into toilet-roll (or paper towel) tube make-overs.

To start your Christmas tree, make three vertical cuts through both sides, to about half way down the cardboard tube. But to get the staggered effect of the branches, you need to have these finish at different points. These three snips spaced out and at different depths give a better 3D effect. Using various shades of green paper also adds to the effect.

For a stencil, I used this basic Christmas tree outline I found on the web and stretched it a bit to allow room for the tube in the centre. But you can also draw your own straight onto colored paper and cut them out. I cut three of these shapes.

These paper branches then slide down into the slots you've cut in the tube.

The final stage is the fun part for the small and crafty; taking  the glue stick and sticking stuff all over the branches. 

You can either cut another piece of paper branch to glue on the front of the tube or paint it green as I've done.

Pinkster stuck pretty much everything shiny in her craft boxes to the Christmas tree branches. She even cut out shapes from foil chocolate wrappers, but I drew the line when she was applying glue to a button that had come off the fly of my jeans.

We're both quite happy with the result, and hey we only have five Christmas trees in the house.. If you count the big one in the living room.

We'll be doing more Christmas Craft projects in the next week, so keep checking in for more ideas. Pinkster is keen to make some snowmen so they will likely be next..

PS Just home from the school run and guess what all the kids in her class made today to bring home?

Make that six. :0)