“Sail away with me…”

Vacation is coming!! What better way to get ready for the holidays than building this colorful little boat? We combined the loads of small boxes in our storeroom that were waiting for a project in order to be recycled and our gang of CREATIVE FUNLAB artists for a whimsical result. This idea came from one of my all time favorite craft websites: firstpallete. The only defect is that these boats can’t go in water.  However, they are perfect for stimulating the imagination – combinine with little figurines like pirates and princesses and the fun can begin!

You will need:

Step 1: Decide what shape you want to give to your boat. We used heavy cardboard boxes so I pre-cut the boat shape for the kids. If you are using old pasta or cereal boxes at home which are made of light weight cardboad, your kids should be able to do this themselves.

Step 2: Decide what color to paint the boat. We decided to paint ours blue and orange using the acrylic paints that we have in the workshop. Instead, for those of you doing this at home, I have recommended a great paint line called Liquid Metals for two reasons: these paints cover cardboard very well and the metallic colors create spetacular results!

Step 3: I was not happy with the upper edge of the box where I had cut the cardboard because the paint did not cover well. To overcome this problem, I covered this edge with hot glue. After it cooled off, I gave it a coat of blue paint.

Step 4: Now it is time to make the sails. We had the kids cut two different sized triangles out of watercolor paper and color them using watercolor crayons. These crayons are a lot of fun because by dipping the crayon in a cup of water you get the effect of using a wet brush.  Remember to color both sides of sails.

Step 5: Assemble the sails. To do so we glued two long wooden skewers together (we used the kind that you use to cook meat on the grill). Then glue the sails to the wooden skewer. Take a good sized piece of Sculpt-it and roll it into a ball. Glue it to the bottom of the inside of the boat. Insert the wooden end of the skewer into the Sculpt-it. As the Sculpt-it dries it will harden and will hold your mast upright.

In summary, we started out with this:

and ended up with a colorful fleet of boats!