This is not ground breaking Make Do and Mending, but it is fun nonetheless.
Make It Better...was at the Bath Artisan Market this weekend with the Upcycle Exchange, and I thought it would be a great idea to have a little Upcycling workshop running alongside. The theme for this month’s market was Clowns and circuses, so I thought, what better, than to have a tin can stilt making workshop?!
In my head, 2 weeks before the market, this sounded like a great idea. The day before, cleaning up old tin cans, it felt less like it…
My first issue was the lack of any significant number of tin cans and no desire toeat baked beans and tinned tomatoes solidly for a week, even if it is for a good cause…
So I turned to my local Freecycle group, and was inundated with tin cans!
A quick wash and spruce up later and they are ready to go.
I was going to take along a variety of different things for the kids to decorate them with,like old comics and sheet music etc, but then I saw these on Pinterest, and thought they were sooo cool, everyone would want some, so just took the stuff to make these!
I can’t click through to the original source via Pinterest so can’t credit these to whoever deserves it-let me know it it’s you!
Just in case you can’t quite work out for yourselves…
This is what you need:
- Tin Cans (who would have thought it?!) If you have got any bigger ones, they work a bit better, but standard 400g ones work just fine
- Paper etc to decorate with
- PVA/mod podge and a brush
- Hammer and nail
- String-I was lacking in much string but have got lots of old bed sheets, so I tore some of these into strips
This is what you do:
- Open the tins (use one of those new-fanlged safety tin opener thingys to get a nice not too sharp edge) and eat the contents….then clean them out and remove the label-white spirit is good for getting rid of the sticky bits
- Decorate as you/your small person sees fit and leave to dry (elephant toes are very quick and very easy ;))
- Use the hammer and nail to (carefully) punch two holes into each can
- Thread your string/strips of fabric/ribbon through the holes
- Get your Small to stand on the stilts so you can gauge how long the handles need to be and tie off appropriately
- Get set, go….!!
My Make Do and Mend Year 
They’re fab- when I was a child I didn’t have elephant toes on mine 😦
I was talking to my children about stilts and tin can telephones. You’ve reminded me I was going to make some for them to try.
Have fun!
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