Did you know that tomorrow is Earth Day? In honour of this special environmentally focused day, we thought it would be fun to pull together some craft ideas created from recyclable materials found around your home, and inspired by some of our favourite friends and neighbours.
Nature Cat – Painted Rock
Tally Ho! It’s Nature Cat time! For this craft, you will need to start by hunting out the perfect rock. Once you’ve found one, next step – time to add some character.
For our Nature Cat rock, we used simple acrylic paint, felt and a feather to achieve our Fred inspired stone! You can also use markers, glue, or paper, and really whatever else you can think to stick to a rock.
Once you have completed your rock friend, why not take them outside on a mini adventure, especially if you made Nature Cat – he loves exploring a backyard. Tally Ho, let’s go!
Daniel Tiger – Toilette Paper Roll Characters
We have a grr-ific suggestion for all those toilette paper rolls you’ve been saving up for a rainy craft day—say hello to our Daniel Tiger inspired paper roll characters!
For our Daniel and Caterina paper roll friends, we used felt, googly eyes, and glue to craft some of their key features. But you could just as easily use paint and markers, decorative tape and construction paper, and if you don’t have googly eyes, you can make your own by cutting them out of paper. Sky is the limit!
The secret to our cat inspired friends was the ear fold at the top of the paper roll. Push down the opposing center sides of one end of the paper roll to create your own cat ears.
Another pro tip when you are trying to create a familiar character is to look at some of their iconic features and replicate them somehow in your craft. For example, we made sure to include Daniel’s red sweater and Caterina’s green bow.
Next step—play with your newly made friends!
Dr. Zoom & Berby – Egg Carton Characters
Ready for an egg carton adventure? We’ve created a super sweet Berby and Dr. Zoom craft, so you can take them along on your next trip to the Secret Museum.
This craft is going to require some fancy cutting, so definitely a parent and kid collaboration. For Berby, we cut out two egg carton cups and glued them together. Painted them to match Berby’s signature style, and added her antenna made from pipe cleaners and pom poms.
For Dr. Zoom, only one egg cup is required to create the back of his shell, which is then painted a yellow–green. Then we drew Dr. Zoom’s face on green construction paper using a black marker. Cut it out and attached it through a slit made with an Xacto knife on the paper shell. The legs were simply traced and cut from the same green craft paper and glued to the inside of the shell.
And voila, now you have the perfect handmade companions to accompany you on all your everyday hero adventures!
Charlie’s Colorfoms City – Milk Carton Marker Holder
Finally, it’s time to shake things up and add a little story to all those left-over milk cartons in the recycling bin with this Charlie’s Colorforms City inspired marker holder make! Seriously, who better to hold all our colouring supplies, than Charlie himself!
Again, this craft will require some advance cutting skills to achieve Charlie’s signature triangle hat shape. But once the cutting is done, all that is left to do is paint and decorate your Charlie marker holder. Craft-Wizz tip – we suggest painting your marker holder with a white base layer first, this will help your next coat of decorations really stand out. And don’t forget to wash out your carton well before starting.
Extra credit—Want to amp up the story power of your new Colorforms marker holder. Consider folding up some fun story prompt ideas and adding them into the marker holder. Your little one can pull one out and use it to help inspire their next creation!
Bonus Crafts
Before we sign off, we wanted to share a few more environmentally inspired crafts that we came across while doing our own research.
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- This craft is for our green thumb gardeners out there. A great one to take outside and amp up the natural beauty in your neighbourhood.
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- This is a super cool craft that we’ve seen popping up around Pinterest. All you need is a fresh pinecone, and some perseverance.
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- Here is a more functional craft twist new on the toilette paper roll.
- Cardboard Robots
- Essentially cardboard robots really are the rulers of the recyclable craft scene. You can let your imagination run wild with all your recylables to create the ultimate automated paper bot!
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- Here is how to hacking your plastic bottles into plant holders
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- Now that you’ve made the change to cloth bags, what to do with all your left over plastic. Have you considered a braided basket?
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- Take those coffee cans and trans-tweet them into bird feeders!
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- For those of us who love fashion, this is a simple yet stylish craft to elevate your look.
We can’t wait to see what characters you create out of the recyclable materials round around your homes. We would love to see what you make—share them with us by tagging @9StoryMG in your posts and/or emailing them to us at socialmedia@9story.com.
Now go forth and craft!
