Lily is the brains behind this invention. Last summer, she wanted a way to transport her silly bands on our vacation without them getting all tangled up in her suitcase. I looked around the house and handed her an empty toilet paper roll. It worked perfectly! However, that plain brown roll of cardboard just wasn’t fancy enough for my taste. So when the girls had a day off from school last Monday, we fan-ci-fied a couple of silly band holders.
Emmy’s been keeping her silly bands on a paper plate on the top of her dresser. While silly bands don’t seem to be the rage any more, kids still like them. The girls have received silly bands in goody bags for Halloween (see the bat?) and birthdays.
We gathered together our supplies: toilet paper rolls, scissors, a ruler, scrapbook paper, a pencil, paintbrush, and Mod Podge. I had Lily measure the length of the toilet paper roll, and then we added a couple of inches to our measurement. This craft was a great introduction to using a ruler! I also showed Lily how to measure the paper, draw a couple of dots, and then place the ruler by the dots to draw a straight line.
Lily is painting Mod Podge onto her piece of scrapbook paper. We wrapped the paper around the toilet paper roll. I made some slits on the excess paper at each end, and folded the tabs in, which helped the edges have more of a finished look.
I held the newly papered roll while the girls painted Mod Podge on the outside of the roll to protect the paper and give it a smooth finish. While I originally wanted to use a sponge brush, the bristles on Lily’s paintbrush gave us a nice texture. We could have made these holders even fancier by gluing a ribbon on the seam of the scrapbook paper, but as this was more of a spur-of-the-moment craft, we bypassed the ribbon. Here is Emmy’s completed holder, doing its job of reining in those silly bands!
