I love saving things from the rubbish and recycling them through the children’s crafts. It might be an odd sock being made into a Reindeer Sock Puppet or a cereal box being turned into a Dragon Hobby Horse. I think it’s really important to tune the kiddies into minimising waste wherever we can.
You can imagine how excited I was to hear about The Cardboard Man’s innovative range of children’s furniture. Made from recycled, water-resistant cardboard, their kids’ flatpack furniture kits can be constructed and customised by children!
Recycled and an opportunity to get creative all in one! It sounded right up my street and I said a wholehearted “YES PLEASE” when asked if I’d like a couple of bedside cabinets for my boys to try out.
The cardboard bedside cabinet came in just 4 pieces so the children had it put together in no time. They were surprisingly sturdy for cardboard and will be great next to my boys’ beds. I don’t think they’ll take a huge amount of weight but there’s certainly plenty of space on top for their night lights and bedtime drinks and two compartments underneath to put a few books and some secret treasures!
I let the children decide completely by themselves how they wanted to decorate and personalise them. We had a look in our art supplies to see what the choices were and they both quickly had a vision of what they were going to do.
We pushed the kitchen table to one side, covered the floor with newspaper and got stuck in. It was really interesting and rather lovely to see the two children’s different personalities and styles shine through in their designs and they both took enormous pride and care in what they were doing.
11-year-old Biscuit loved the idea of the bedside cabinet being customisable so much so that he decided to cover the outsides of his unit with sticky back chalkboard paper, that way he could chalk a new design on the outside every day if he wanted!
On the top he painted it a matching black and printed off a picture of a dragon he found on the internet. I stuck it down for him with spray adhesive.
He is absolutely delighted with it and thinks it’s “Really Cool”… in Tween language I think that means it’s about as good as something can get!
9-year-old Crumb took a totally different approach and decided to use pretty much every colour of paint we had. He started with acrylics but ended up using watercolours too because he loved some of the metallic effects we had.
Crumb started with his table top and painted the outer corners and then worked in stripes moving into the centre. I love the table top and would adore to have it for the wall so I’ll have to ask him to paint another picture like it just for me!
Once he’d done the top he set to work on the sides of the bedside cabinet and went for diagonal stripes in 3 alternating colours which he did all the way round. It certainly is a very colourful piece!
The cardboard furniture has been a huge hit with the children and I think it’s lovely that they’ve really been able to stamp their own personality on to them. If they end up getting bored with their designs in the future they could just be repainted too!
You can buy the bedside cabinets for £24. They obviously won’t last as long as wooden furniture but I love that they are both recycled and recyclable and that the children have had so much fun with them. I think that I’ll be adding a little bit of glue to the shelves just to help them stay in place when they’re being used.
I think the cardboard bedside cabinets would make great and unusual gifts for creative kids. Would your children enjoy customizsing their own bedroom furniture too?
You might also like:
- Fabric Painting Art Project For Kids
- Wax Resist Painting
- Window Painting
- Rainbow Sponge Painting
- How To Make Coloured Sand
More Painting Ideas You Might Like:
