Creating a teddy bears’ picnic in an egg box

Egg boxes are brilliant for creating small world play scenes and helping keep them contained. We had fun recently creating a small-world teddy bears’ picnic in an egg box using odds and ends from the craft cupboard. It was quite a fiddly craft in places, particularly with making the teddy bears, but was a fun craft project for Sophie and me to do together.

 

 

You will need:

• An egg box
• A cardboard toilet roll tube
• Green and blue paint
• Red and white paper
• Six long pipe-cleaners in the colours you want your teddy bears to be (we used yellow, pink and purple pipe cleaners)
• Small scraps of coloured felt
• Buttons
• Red, green and orange beads
• A dark green pipe cleaner
• Scraps of coloured paper
• Small yellow pompoms
• Pink paint
• Six large green pompoms
• A black marker pen
• Scissors
• PVA Glue
• Sticky tape

 

 

1) Cut the long pointy bits off the inside of the egg box. Paint the inside of the egg box with blue paint on the top half and green paint on the bottom half and leave to dry.

 

 

2) Make the teddy bears using long pipe cleaners. Start by bending a pipe cleaner in half. Bend a small section at the top forward to make the teddy bear’s muzzle. Then bend two small sections up either side of this for the ears. This should create a heart shape with the bend for the muzzle facing forward (which will be the teddy bear’s head) and two ‘legs’ of pipe cleaner below it. Twist the pipe cleaner just below the muzzle. Next bring up one pipe cleaner ‘leg’ behind the teddy bear’s head, around one side of the muzzle and down again. Repeat for the other ‘leg’ and twist again just below the muzzle. Bend a short section of each leg out to the side to make the teddy bear’s arms and twist again. Finally make two more bends for the legs and wrap the remaining ends of the pipe cleaner around the teddy bear’s body. I then used a marker pen to make dots for the teddy bear’s eyes. Repeat to make six teddy bears. It sounds more complicated to explain than to do. I found this video tutorial on Pinterest helpful for showing how to bend the pipe cleaners to make a teddy bear.

 

 

3) Cut a piece of red paper the same length as the toilet roll tube and slightly wider. Fold in half and cut slits three-quarters of the way across. Cut small strips of white paper. Open out the red paper and weave the white strips of paper over and under the slits to make a chequered picnic blanket for the teddy bear’s picnic. Secure the strips with sticky tape and trim.

 

 

4) To make sandwiches, glue a coloured strip of felt between two white pieces of felt. We used red felt to make jam sandwiches and yellow felt for cheese sandwiches. Leave to dry and then cut into triangles.

 

5) Use a similar technique to make a large cake for the teddy bears. Glue together layers of red and yellow felt with the yellow felt on the top and bottom. Leave to dry. Once dry, cut into a circle and then cut a segment out.

 

6) To make cupcakes, cut out small circles from scraps of coloured paper and glue a small yellow pompom on top. Dab pink paint on top of the pompom for the icing.

 

7) To make oranges and apples, dip a green pipe cleaner in PVA glue and thread red, orange and green beads on to the pipe cleaner, leaving gaps between. Leave to dry and then trim the pipe cleaner close to the bead of one side and leaving a small piece of green pipe cleaner visible on the other side.

 

8) Use buttons to make the teddy bears’ plates. Glue the buttons in place on the paper picnic blanket.

 

 

9) Arrange some food on button plate and glue into place.

 

 

10) Cut out cloud shapes from white felt and a circle of yellow felt for the sun. Glue into place on the blue half of the egg box.

 

11) Place a large green pompom in each segment of the bottom half of the egg box.

 

12) Cut a toilet roll tube in half lengthways. Place the toilet roll tube in the middle of the bottom half of the eggbox to make a picnic table. Glue the picnic blanket on top.

 

 

13) Place the teddy bears on top of the green pompoms ready to have their picnic.

 

 

Sophie loved the tiny pipe cleaner teddy bears and has had fun playing with her mini teddy bears’ picnic. We found it easier to glue our plates and food in place as they were so tiny and easily lost, but you could leave them loose for small world play if you prefer. We also left the outside of our box unpainted to save time, but it would look nicer to paint the outside too.