Tube People

To do this easy craft you just need cardboard tubes, things for decoration, and your imagination! Make tube people, monsters, aliens or anything else you feel like.

Stuff Needed

  • Cardboard tubes.
  • Paint (optional).
  • Items to decorate with e.g. coloured paper, ribbons, pipe cleaners or whatever you have available.
  • Glue (liquid school glue works best for this).
  • Scissors.
  • Pens.
  • Masking tape (optional)

Instructions:

  1. Paint as many tubes as you want to use in any colours you like. Leave them to dry. If you don’t have paint you could cover the tubes in paper instead.
Colourfully Painted Cardboard Tubes
  1. Start making bits to decorate the tubes with. There are some examples below but the possibilities are endless!

  1. When the paint is dry, stick the decorations on however you like to bring your tube people to life. Liquid glue takes a bit longer to dry but sticks better onto a painted surface than a glue stick.

Ideas for Decoration:

Eyes: Cut circles or ovals out of paper and draw pupils on with a pen or crayon. Make as many eyes as you’d like your creatures to have.

Cut out pairs of paper eyes for tube people.

Hair:

  • Stick lengths of wool onto a piece of tape. Leave the ends of the tape clear so it’s sticky enough to put onto your tube when it’s dry.
  • Bend pipe cleaners into shapes and stick them around the top of your tube.
  • Cut strips of paper then wrap each strip tightly round a pencil. Take it off the pencil and it will be curled.
Curl paper strips using a pencil to make 'hair'.

Arms:

  • Cut two strips of paper the same size. You can use two different colours for a fun effect. Stick the ends together at right angles with glue (any sort of glue is fine for this). Fold the bottom strip back over the top strip. Fold the other strip over the top. Keep going until the whole of the strips have been folded. Glue the last bit to stop it coming undone.
Two strips of paper can be folded and glued to make a bendy arm.

Accessories:

  • You could make a hat using a small section of a spare tube stuck onto a cardboard circle. You can draw round the end of the tube on a piece of flat card then cut it out to make the top of the hat. The easiest way to stick the pieces together is with masking tape.
  • If you have ribbon you could make a bow tie or a hair bow to stick on.
  • Pipe cleaners could be used to make glasses (or arms, or hair).