Cardboard Robot from Say Noodle {contributor}

Hello Ladies. Sorry, I couldn’t help myself:) When Ginger introduced the guest posters and included myself with “And even a guy” it made me laugh. Truth is that most of the cool stuff for kids seems to come from the ladies. Anyway, my names Pete. I’m a father of two rad boys (aged 2 and 4) and the very lucky husband of their mum. I post over at Say Noodle about kids stuff, creativity, cardboard and making toys, we love cardboard. You should swing by, we could totally hang out, it’ll be awesome!

When Ginger asked the date we’d like to post, I specifically asked for my post to be around now as I had a few looming project deliveries at work and wanted to make sure I had the capacity to write something good. In the mean time I decided to quit my Job, change EVERYTHING and move my family half way across the country (Australia, pretty big country) to a small coastal town for what you can quite literally call a “Sea Change” whilst still delivering on aforementioned projects. So you might say, I’m currently stretched to capacity. That said, It’s going to be AWESOME and I’m crazy excited about my post so after that long winded, rambling introduction, let’s make something.

It’s a cardboard robot with real moving parts! OMG!!!

I love robots, my boys love robots and we love making them together. This time though, I made it in the evening so they’ll have a surprise in the morning. Which is gonna be rad, until they realize I only made one. Can’t believe I’ve only made one. This can’t possibly end well:)

Gather your materials, you’ll need:

• Cardboard, We used two different weights. Corrugated cardboard for the torso and cereal box card for the head, arms and legs.
• Glue, I used the boys paste, PVC based craft glue will give you a better result though
• Scissors
• A craft knife
• A ruler, a sharpie and a cutting mat.
• Split pins or brads. (We’d packed ours into moving boxes (good one dad!!!) so I ad-libbed and made the equivalent out of a toothpick. (Yeah, I’m a bit like Macgyver.)

Cut out all your pieces

For this particular robot, I want to have a door on the front so we can take a look under the hood and see what makes our robot tick.

Cut out three squares for the body. Two from your corrugated board and one from your cereal box board. When cutting the cereal box, I cut over one of the corner folds. This will be the hinge for our door later.

Now cut a square hole out of the middle of one of your corrugated pieces.

Use that hole to act as a template for cutting out your door an cut three sides coming out from the fold in the cereal board, leaving the fold to act as your hinge.

Now, you’ve done the bulk of the work (yay) These pieces will make a body, with a cavity for the workings and a front door. Boom!

Cut out rectangles for your arms, legs and head from the cereal board. Then cut out some more pieces to stick inside the robots tummy. I cut out a circle that will spin. You might do cogs (Cogs are tricky:) or some square buttons or something.

Putting it all together.

Now that you have all your pieces, we can start assembling this robot.

1. Take the two pieces of corrugated board and the arms legs and head.
2. Apply your glue to the piece with the cavity cut out.
3. Position the arms, legs and head to your liking on to the glued surface.
4. Add some more glue and then place the the solid piece of corrugated cardboard on top. This is the robot’s back which will hold all your pieces together. You should now have the best part of a vanilla robot.
5. Now, glue on the front of his/her tummy and you should have a robot with an opening door on it’s tummy. BOOM!
6. You can then add in your cogs or wheels or inner robot workings.
   
   
   
7. Finally, you, or your little ones, can draw on some details with a sharpie.

All done! This post seems really wordy but from end to end but the robot probably only took a 20-30 mins to make and I’m really happy with the end result, Hope you enjoyed it too. Let’s hope the little men are happy to share.

Thank so much for that awesome tutorial, Pete!
That is the coolest robot ever!
Yes, I have 3 boys…so we will definitely have to make 3! ;)

Don’t forget to stop by Say Noodle for more fun post like this! :)

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This post were created for Ginger Snap Crafts by Say Noodle.