Day 23: Make a "Pet Cage" with Impress Your Kids

I collect shoe boxes. It started off as an innocent, "Hey, we could use these for a craft." soon, those little boxes started taking over our closet! So, I found a GREAT craft to use up all those little shoeboxes---turn them into a pet cage!



All you need is a shoebox, masking tape, some yarn and scissors. And a few decorations might be nice, too!



First, cut off the four edges of the box's top.
Second, glue them into a rectangle to form your new cage's gate.
Third, cut yarn the same height as your new gate. Tape the yarn down on the top and bottom of the inside of the gate.

Now you need to get your gate attached to your cage!



Tape over the entire thing. This will keep the newly glued pieces together and makes a nice background for decorating. (We used masking tape but some of that colored duct tape would be way cool!)



After you've taped the entire thing, add a little more tape to one of the short sides so you can make a hinge. It's the same idea as when you're taping back a page into a book---you've done that a few million times before, haven't you? Oh, it's just me? *sigh* Well, just run a piece of tape down the spine of the inside and outside so it moves freely.



Now let the kids decorate and play! We used sticky foam pieces for decoration, a little bit of shredded paper as padding for the pets. My son loved his little cage so much we had to take it to the grocery store after naps!

I think it would be cute to make a whole bunch of these and make a circus train or a zoo with them! You could paint them to match and set up a whole menagerie!

Amanda is a stay-at-home mom of two who blogs at OhAmanda.com and Impress Your Kids. In her former life, Amanda was a Children’s Pastor — overseeing, organizing and developing ministry for kids in nursery through middle school, but now that she is a mom, her “skills” are used up on her kids!