Two Weeks of Creative Fun! Recycled train craft

I'm so very excited to be part of this blog hop party hosted by Alicia from An Accidental Homeschooling Mum, where 15 mummy bloggers from the Singapore Mom Bloggers group each create a craft project over 15 days. 

I was never great at art. Nah... I'm best at drawing stick figures. But I think anything can be art, even stick figures. So onward I went to get my creative juices going. I was inspired by my 2 year old daughter's love for train. Yes, my girl loves trains. Not princesses, but trains. She gets super excited at seeing the MRT trains, and you guessed it, Thomas the Train is her fav too! That's not all. Nothing can take my little super gung-ho girl away from painting. I can't even say the word 'painting' at home, otherwise all 'hell' will break loose and she will pester me non-stop to do 'painting, painting, I want to do painting!'. Every time I bring any painting materials out, I have to first calm her down: 'Wait, let mummy prepare everything first ok?'. This second, she'll say 'ok', the next second she's got her slippers on and out she goes to the painting corner at the front porch.

So for this post, EV and I will be combining the two and creating a train using recycled materials. The materials needed - toilet rolls, egg cartons, yarn, thick straw, blue construction paper

First, we painted the toilet rolls and the egg cartons. Her colour of choice? Blue, as usual.

Next, we dipped the yarn into red paint. While we were at it, we did some art work with the yarn too - something new for EV.

Poke two holes on one end of two of the toilet rolls and four holes on opposite ends of the remaining toilet roll. Choose one toilet roll to be the front of the train and make a larger hole the size of the straw on the top of it. Cut the red coloured yarn into short strips. Create a face for the train by cutting a circle out of the blue construction paper. Make sure there are tabs around the circle.

To assemble:
1. Tie the three toilet rolls together with the yarn.
2. Cut the thick straw into a suitable length and insert into the hole to make the smoke stack.

3. Glue the egg cartons to the toilet rolls for the wheels, four wheels to a roll.
4. Finally, glue the face to the front of the train, by gluing the tabs to the inside of the toilet roll.

And viola! A friendly train craft using recycled materials.

Check out what creative crafts these mummy bloggers have done

Alicia and her Eric Carle-inspired artwork

Adeline and her polymer clay-decorated photo frame

Sandra and her dinosaur-themed idea

Coming up next! 

As a working mom, there are never enough hours in a day, so Susan is always doing a juggling act with her family, work, being a nurturing mom, loving wife and career woman which explains why she named her blog A Juggling Mom. Her blog documents her journey and adventures as a mother to a 3-year-old toddler and hopes to share resources on how moms can lead a balanced life and be a happy, healthy and fulfilled mom.

She will be sharing the next craft post on making farm-themed finger puppets with her little daughter who has got ambitions of being a farmer.

Love the craft ideas so far? 
Blog hop to these mummy bloggers to see what they will be creating on these dates!

June 25 - Susan @ http://www.ajugglingmom.com/
June 26 - Ann @ http://beautifulrevelry.com/
June 27 - Justina @ http://makingmum.blogspot.com/
June 28 - Adora @ http://www.gingerbreadmum.blogspot.com/
June 29 - Regina @ http://www.reginamoo.blogspot.com/
June 30 - Sarah @ http://www.theplayfulparents.com/
July 1 - Jennifer @ http://augdinoegg.blogspot.com/
July 2 - Pamela @ http://tanfamilychronicles.blogspot.com/
July 3 - Ming Yuan @ http://blog.mybabyfootsteps.com/
July 4 - Dominique @ http://dominiquegoh.com/
July 5 - Karen @ http://littlejazzelle.blogspot.com