Cardboard Projects
Fun with Cardboard
Cardboard is a great medium for a lot of projects…. It’s cheap (free most of the time) and easy to work with. A ruler, razor knife, and a hot glue gun are the only basic tools you need to make a lot of fun stuff. The projects below are just a few of the things I’ve made with cardboard over the years.
The Packing Peanut Dispenser
This is a simple packing peanut dispenser I made at work probably ten years ago. (which I still use to this day.) When I started they just keep all the shipping peanuts in large garbage cans and they would end up all over the place and make a huge mess so I made this to fix that issue.
The hopper was made from a Dell computer box and I taped a piece of clear film over a hole in the front so I could see how full it is. The hopper sits on a wedge shaped platform and the angle allows the peanuts flow to the front where the exit chute is attached. The two tabs at the corners hold the hopper in place and I can then slide a piece of cardboard under the exit hole which then allows me to remove the hopper to refill it when needed.
The chute also has a clear section in it to make sure it’s flowing. The actual dispenser mechanism is just a simple straight cardboard slide with a section cut out in the rear. Pull it forward to allow the peanuts to flow and push it in to stop the flow. It works pretty good and had been going strong for years.
The Christmas UZI
One year I asked my mom what she wanted for Christmas and she said “a gun”, and in my family it’s more about how you wrap the gift then what the gift is so…. I made her a gun gift box. A little cardboard, packing tape, and some hot glue, and a good amount of time and patiences and I had a fun little gift box.
I little more time and a whole lot more patiences and I had it wrapped with Xmas paper.
It was life sized too. I don’t remember what I actually put in it but she got a kick out of it.
The CaTstle
This was a fun project I made for my Cat. The construction part was pretty easy as it was only three boxes but the drawing detail took awhile and I’m not sure the cat appreciated it as much as I did.
It was a multi level castle with a lot of windows for look outs and 360 degree defense.
It had a roof top terrace for archers too.
I’m not sure if she was impressed or not.
Scoping out the new digs.
“Oh theres paper in here? … I guess this will do.”
She didn’t stay up there long I don’t think there was adequate protection up that high. In the end a plain Amazon box won out over the castle but it was still a fun project to make.
The DRAGON Bike 
Every year a bunch of people from my job would get together and we would do a pub crawl on our bikes. We called it Tour De Brew and we would ride around town all night from bar to bar and drink beer. It was always a great time and we did it for about 10 years running. (we even had shirts made up every year) I think in 2011 we decided to do a second one around Halloween so we dressed up for it and this is how the Dragon Bike was born.
The design for the head was taken from a picture I found on the internet and the body was just formed to fit the bike. I actually laid the bike on a piece of cardboard and just traced a shape around it. There’s a small flashing RED led cluster in the mouth powered by a 12v battery pack. Turning radius was a bit limited but I got the hang of riding it after a bit.
Here’s a shot of the Led’s at night. They flashed to simulate the dragon breathing fire. One year I was going to make it breath real fire but I decided fire and copious amounts of alcohol were probably not a good mix.
I also made a cardboard sword and armor to complete the package.
Yeah… here I am in all my glory. It was really a fun project to make and it got a lot of attention each year. I think I had the bike in this configuration for about 4-5 years so people got use to seeing it each year. (we always went to the same 9-10 bars every year.) The Dragon was finally retired but I still keep his head around for sentimental reasons.
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