Portable 'Soldier Bunker' Craft - Jenni

I made my little 2yo girl a ‘Travelling Dolls House’ earlier this week (https://pagingfunmums.com/2013/02/18/the-tiny-travelling-dolls-house-jenni/) & I wanted to come up with something for my 4yo son Master L. I had all sorts of fantastic ideas from a lot of our followers on Facebook…such as ‘A Telephone Box with Superman Inside’, a ‘Little Tool Box’, a ‘Mini Aquarium’ and the list goes on! I really want to make all of those amazing suggestions in the future too! I have always liked teeny tiny little toys – Polly Pocket was a FAVOURITE of mine as a little girl! Anyway, talking to Louise, we came up with this little idea…the ‘Portable Soldier Bunker’.

When I gave this to Master L after kindy, we told me this gift was ‘the best surprise EVER’! I was sooo happy to hear that!. He is still wearing it around his neck and has begged to take it to bed…we did a deal & he can hang it next to his bed.

I have also done a ‘girly version’ of this for Louise’s little girl Miss M…she is very girly…but also likes the FUN of some boy stuff too..so we found some pink camouflage paper for this.

Materials

Matchbox (again found from your local craft store)

Army men (you can get these at most $2 stores in the ‘kids birthday party section’)

A4 (approx) sheet of ‘Camouflage’ print (we found some from a little ‘googling’ & printed this on normal paper)

Plastic Bag

Fishing Line or Cotton

Craft Glue or Glue Gun

Scissors

Pencil/pen

Ruler

Ribbon – approx 40 – 50 cm long

Matchbox

Then it’s just a matter of measuring out a piece of Camo paper to cover the outside of the matchbox & glueing it down. I also measured a small piece to go in the bottom of the drawer too (I tried covered the whole drawer for the green matchbox but found it a little difficult to move the drawer in & out, so for the pink, I just covered the bottom & it still looks very cute!)

Army Man Parachute

I was lucky enough to find some Camouflage Lolly Bags in the party section of my local $2 shop, but you can use any kind of plastic bag! There is no definite sizing to the parachute, but I used 18cm x 18cm, I found that it was big enough to ‘fly’ & small enough to roll up nicely and fit into the matchbox.

Note the four holes punched in each corner

Once the plastic is cut, you will need to punch 4 holes, one in each corner (using a pen is fine). Then measure 4 lengths of fishing line or cotton, for my size of parachute, I measured 30cm. Then tie each piece to each corner.

Then lie the plastic face down and draw up all four pieces of line/cotton & tie together, then tie this around the waist of your army man! Easy!