Ages ago, I made a dollhouse out of an old cardboard box and some ripped up magazines. It was so easy to make, and I really enjoyed it; it could be a great project to do with children or for children!
I found a box that had a large flap lid, which became the front of the house and, when folded down, the garden.
Firstly, I cut some crude squares out of the back of it to form two windows. and a few strips of cardboard from a cereal box I positioned as a floor and two long walls. Next, I mixed up a huge batch of water diluted PVA glue and began layering strips of kitchen paper and toilet tissue on top and around the structure. I made sure to bend around the sides of the windows so there was no rough edges left.
Once that was dry, I did another layer, and that dried too. It is pretty sturdy, but another layer wouldn't harm anyone. I then cut out hundreds of pictures from magazines, photocopies of books, old books from charity shops, and paper ephemera I had collected. I liked to rip the edges to leave a rough look, and it leads to a better blended collage rather than a lot of blocked shapes.
I arranged them as I liked, having fun with colours and patterns and textures of the different papers. I wanted to create a flower garden with a path, so I layered pictures from flower advertisements in a hodge podge manner, but if you preferred you could lay them out in neat lines or shapes.
What's great about this project is that it can be done however you (or your children) want it to be; if you wanted a spooky halloween project, this is quick, cheap and fun; it can be a winter house for Christmas, or you could try different techniques and shapes to make it into a fairytale castle or home from a book. It doesn't have to be perfect; if you don't have pretty pictures, you can photocopy ones from books in the library, or use free magazines from garden centres. You could even cut out little furniture pictures from catalogues!
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