Toilet roll letters

Recycling toilet rolls

Following on from the cardboard theme, after making a cardboard lamp at l’École du Carton, I wanted to try making something out of recycled toilet rolls. These beautiful toilet roll letters are using nothing but recycled cardboard and the cardboard tubes from inside toilet rolls.

There are so many different things that you can make with recycled toilet rolls, especially with children, that it can be worth collecting them.

Make your own recycled toilet roll letters

These toilet roll letters are made by simply cutting out the shape of a letter, then glueing a strip of cardboard with a glue gun, before filling in the letter with a pattern made from your recycled toilet rolls. Here’s how to do it:

Step 1: Print out the letters

I printed my letters at roughly the size of a piece of A4 paper. If you want to make a word, Make sure you use the same font size for each letter, and that each letter fits on the paper. To save ink, print only the outline of the letters. The font I used was ChunkFive, which I found on Font Squirrel, a great resource for free fonts

Step 2: Cut out the letters

Cut out the letters, leaving you with a piece of paper the size of your letter.

Step 3: Cut strips of cardboard

I used double cardboard, which I cut into strips of 2cm wide. Make sure you cut against the ridges of the cardboard, so the pattern showing on your final letter, will be constant.

Step 4: Glue strips of card all the way around the edge of the letter

 

With a gluegun, work around the letter, cutting strips to size and glueing them together to outline your letter.

Step 5: Slice toilet rolls into strips

Slice the toilet rolls into strips the same width as your strips of card. In my case, this was 2cm.

Step 6: Arrange strips of toilet roll into pattern

Fold, roll and otherwise arrange your strips of toilet roll to create a pattern. Glue this pattern inside the outlined letter with a gluegun.

Step 7: Decorate

Once you have finished the letter, you could either leave it like it is, or decorate it. You could paint the whole letter using spray paint, paint just the cardboard border, or glue decorative paper around the edge. I simply cut out a coloured piece of card in the shape of the letter and stuck it to the back.