The Rickety Cardboard House

Like most toddlers, Sean loves cardboard boxes. But he really enjoys playing inside his rickety house. I had always wanted to make Sean a house so I saved up the box his car seat came in. We brought him to a relatives' house who had her own play room complete with a live size house, a slide and a huge collection of toys. Sean loved to play inside the house, so I decided it was time to convert the old car seat box.

It started as a slap and dash job, a lot of tape here and there to keep the box upright. Even when it was bare, Sean loved playing in it. Here he was decorating his house with his Cars stickers. It must be the novelty of having a big box inside the room. =D

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Next I added lots of white glue and papers to strengthen the box and pasted color papers left over from school days ("A" Levels Art exams) to cover the bare interior walls. I can't believe I kept those papers since 1995 and actually brought them along from Spore to Malaysia.

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Then I covered the exterior walls with white paper to make it look cleaner and in a burst of creativity at 3am in the morning, I added a paper tree on one of the wall. Hey.. it looked great!

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Feeling that there was still something missing, I added a giraffe. Sean liked a picture of a giraffe I had. He kept carrying around the room, so I decided to make a bigger version of it on his house.

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Now that one wall look so good, all the other parts looked awful. The colorful interior started to look garish after Sean tore off bits here and there. At that time we were watching"Finding Nemo" almost every day. So I thought it would be interesting to make the interior as the Ocean. The seaweed took a lot of time, glue and paper. By now, I had to buy lots of new color papers. My collection of old papers had run out of greens and blues.

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The fishes took a bit of time because I had to look for pictures that I could easily copy and then I had to work out how to cut the pieces of color papers to make them. The floor was done days later because by this time I was totally hooked on Knighthood. Sean's house was rather abandoned.. he he he...

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After the interior was sort of done, I lost inspiration. I tried to think of ideas for the other 2 exterior walls and came up with several ideas but I couldn't combine them well. I wanted to do something that Sean would like. Although I like the giraffe a lot, I don't think he's really interested in it. Finally I made a Lightning McQueen, drawn on red paper, not cut out because it's just too complicated and time consuming to make a paper cut of it. After all Sean thinks they are stickers and tries to peel them off all the time!

Alas, he's peeled off a few fishes by now. I have to repair it soon before I forget. The lightning McQueen is stuck on another wall but I haven't done anything else yet. But seriously, Sean enjoys his house whether or not it's decorated. I'm just rather lazy at the moment to continue the project. Will have to make time for the other 2 walls soon! =P