London red bus fun!

We have been having some fun of late with cardboard boxes!  What is the saying kids have more fun with the box than the toy inside? Or something like that…

So purely by chance, my youngest son H, decided he wanted a London bus from our large cardboard box and as I was up for the challenge, we set to it, using our wooden red bus as a template. I also took the opportunity to go through photo albums of our time in London and explain to him a little about where he was born.

Also I have a whole album on London Icons, and I have taken far too many photos of London Routemaster’s in my time, but they served as a great source of inspiration!

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As we had no other plans that day, we quickly set to it making the bus.

I measured up the windows with a ruler but still not too precise and then busily cut the windows out. Once the windows were done, I moved on to the front and back windscreens. With all the cutting out finished,  we then set to it, painting the bus in red paint!

Ok it probably needs a few more coats but H wanted to play play play, so we will leave that for another day!

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I then used the off cuts from the windows to make the signage for the front and back of the bus, painting it black and then using a white dress marker to write up the text before painting the words in white and painting some headlights.

Next was some glue for the bus blinds as they are officially called. We finally added the black wheels using plastic picnic plates and 4 paper fasteners for the last stage.

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We finally had one Routemaster, no 15 heading to Tower Hill! We used to ride on this bus when we lived in London, so we had to pick this one as our special London red bus in Sydney! 😉

The boys have set up bus stops around the house and made Oyster cards and Oyster card readers for the bus too. Such broad spectrum of play involved with this fab cardboard red bus, from imaginary, to travel, to money and finance!

The best bit about this bus is that it can be folded for easy storage and placed under a bed or behind a door for storage whilst not being used.

As it was the Queen’s 90th Birthday over the weekend, we decided the teddies needed a crown to wear to mark the occasion.

What you need: 

1 cardboard box

1 pair of scissors

Large tubs of red and black poster paint

Small tube of acrylic white paint for the text

4 black plastic plates

4 paper fasteners

A steady hand and some patience

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Products shown above: Monochrome striped crown by Monty Tribe, Fabric Camera by Darwin and Penn, Myer Christmas Bear 2015 aptly named “Hudson” and other items are our own.

Disclosure:- this is not a sponsored post.