My son was home sick the first week back to

school after the Winter break. At first I thought he just didn’t want to go back to school after the Winter break, but he was actually genuinely ill. Poor little guy had a fever for 3 days and a very sore throat. Although he slept a lot, he didn’t spend the whole time in bed, so since I had to stay home from work to care for him and we both got pretty bored quick, we decided to do some crafty things together. We tried to think of all the things we could make with toilet paper rolls. You see, I use to teach art to preschoolers, and always teach kids art classes in the summer, so I collect recyclables that we can use for our projects. It’s awful, I am probably the queen of collecting recyclables. You see, it’s hard to throw things out when I can see so much potential in what that piece of “garbage” could be…

Anyways, we thought of a lot of things we could make with those toilet paper rolls, in fact, we used about 10 rolls in one sitting!

While we were thinking about what we could make, I started to bring out some various supplies. Felt markers, glue, gems, tissue paper, scissors, duck/duct tape, paint, glitter glue, etc.  My son instantly grabbed for some felt markers and stuck them into one of the toilet paper rolls and said, “look what I made!  A pen holder!!”. He looked at it for another moment and said, “all we need is a bottom to it. That’s what I’m gonna do, I’m gonna make a pen holder for all these markers!”  He started to colour the toilet paper roll with markers. At first he just coloured solid lines on it, and then half way through he decided that he would draw a picture on it. We found an old cardboard box we weren’t using and cut a small square. My daughter is obsessed with Duck/duct tape, so we “borrowed” some from her room and covered the cardboard square with it.  We then taped the bottom of the toilet paper roll to the cardboard square, O stuck on some gems  and voila!  He made an awesome pen holder. When my daughter came home from school, she liked it so much, she decided to make one too!  This is quite impressive, because she is fourteen, and usually hides in her room until dinner time 😀

Step by step instructions for making a Pen holder from a toilet paper roll:

What you need:

Toilet Paper Roll

Duct/Duck Tape

Cardboard

Stuff to decorate it with

What you’ll do:

1) Decorate the toilet paper roll. You can use felt markers, stickers, paint, gems, sequins, feathers… what ever you want!  You can even decorate it by covering it with duct/duck tape.

2) Cut out a square piece of cardboard, about 1 inch bigger (on each side) than the toilet paper roll. Cover the cardboard with duct/duck tape.

3) Tape the bottom of the decorated toilet paper roll to the cardboard.

After he finished the pen holder, we sat there and thought of quite a few other things we could make with these toilet paper rolls. Come back soon to find out what we made next!