I saw this idea in a Family Fun magazine and thought it would be a fun craft to do with my niece, mostly because every time she comes over she asks “Keeka, can I dress up in your princess jewelry and your princess clothes?”
And by “princess clothes” she means a lacy bit of night time attire that she happened to spot the last time she was over and I let her raid my closet to play dress up. Um, oops. Also, what in the world are the Disney Princesses wearing these days?! Put some clothes on, ARIEL.
So this time I planned ahead and pulled out some kid-friendly items in advance. Much to Jeff’s annoyance, I don’t let him throw out any cardboard tubes because HELLO! Practically all kid’s crafts are made with cardboard tubes. And they are good for spur of the moment pretend light saber attacks.*
It is SO FUN to live with me.
The magazine directions used just one cardboard paper towel tube but we needed two for it to fit. Either they use weird sized paper towels over there or my niece has a really big head.
You flatten the cardboard tube and then make cuts in alternate directions almost all the way through- be sure not to cut too shallow or it won’t bend well. I just pulled out a box of craft supplies and a bottle of glue and she set to work decorating it to look “Princessy.” This meant a lot of feathers, rhinestones, glitter stickers, felt flowers, buttons and paper clips. Turns out, princesses LOVE paper clips. Which is good to know because I was totally stressing about what to send Princess Kate for Christmas this year.
We did not decoupage or paint ours mostly because we were running into a time crunch. She spent a good half hour meticulously gluing on all of the embellishments and then I had to stick it in the freezer to dry it quickly so that she could wear it. She still got a little bit of glue in her hair, which by the way, is pink because one of my other great ideas was to take her to the library and introduce her to Pinkalicious. Between that and the lingerie and the glue I’m thinking that my sister may not want me babysitting anymore.
I really wanted to try this with Scarlette but I’m pretty positive that she’d just eat all of the craft supplies because she’s all “SMALL NON-EDIBLE ITEMS?! THAT’S NOT SAFE! LET ME PUT THEM IN MY MOUTH RAT NAO!”
*Also good for sword fights. “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”
