Tutorial: How to make a cardboard train.

Man being a mom makes you talk about strange things. I hope there is at least one other person in the world who has wondered how to make a cardboard train. hehe. The reason I made a card board train was for Dexter’s second birthday party. I wanted to have something him and his friend could really just be crazy with. And this worked! At one point my husband and sister pushed them around the house, and they thought it was awesome!
So here is how you make one.
After the jump.



Supplies
Number of boxes you want for how long your train will be plus one for the front of the engine. So I wanted mine to be 3 cars long so I used 4 boxes.
Spray paint, I used 2 cans
Hot glue gun
box cutter
strong tape


Step one choose your boxes. I did a mix of sizes instead of all one size.

Step two cut the flaps off all the boxes. Dexter loved this part because he got to take all the cut off parts and run around the house with them like they were swords.

Step three on the box you have for the front engine (I used the tallest box I had) cut off one of the short sides.

It should look like this, well without a naked 2 year old in it.

Step four, Glue the biggest box to the box you just cut up. I glued the box with only 3 sides inside of the big box. I would pick two boxes with the same width,  I did not and it made it a lot more difficult then it should have been.

Step five tape a piece of paper on the front of your train engine. Or draw a square if you want something smaller. After the paper is tapped on draw around it, you are going to cut the square out.

Step 6 cut the square out.

Step7 cut 1 triangle with a straight top instead of a point, okay its not really a triangle anymore, after you have 1 use it as a template and cut 3 more out. Then tape them all together. I would tape the inside and out. Then tape a square into the middle.

Step 8 Almost done! Take two of the flaps and cut out one more triangle and tape them all together. You should have a piece that looks like this.

Now tape or hot glue those pieces onto your train front. You can either stop here or go spray paint the boxes. We spray painted ours.

This is your final product. It entertained the kids for a long time!


If you have any questions just comment and I will be glad to answer!