Monday August 5 2013 (Up-Cycle Piggy banks)

Up-cycle Piggy Banks

So I decided this year that I would provide a craft for the kids to do at the birthday party while the boys open their gifts. This way they don't get bored, and they get another fun thing to take home with them. I was originally going to get each kid a ceramic piggy bank to decorate, but after thinking about how preschoolers and glass don't mix well plus the fact that a decent size ceramic piggy bank starts at $3 I decided I would take the initiative and make piggy banks out of air dry clay, plastic wide mouth jars and paper maché. The first thing I had to do was collect enough plastic containers. Luckily for me my family was able to help me collect a bunch. Then I used air dry clay to make four little legs for each container. I used some painters tape to tape off the threading at the top of the jar so that the lid would still screw on afterwards.

 I attached the legs to the jar using hot glue.

Then I used paper maché to cover the body of each piggy and snout (the lid) separately and allowed them to dry. If you don't do the maché separately you won't be able to remove the lid to open the piggy bank unless you cut an access point somewhere else.

 Once the piggies were dry I made some ears and tails out of air dry clay and attached them using hot glue.

 Then I took the piggies outside and gave them a coat of spray paint. I used grey primer because I knew it would cover the words on the newspaper, but you could easily do any other color, or even do acrylic paint. 

 I left the piggies grey because the kids will each get to color/decorate their own piggy. Here are all the piggies drying in the sunshine.

Next I drilled 2 holes in each piggy to make cutting out the coin slot easier. Excuse my finger in this picture. I was trying to hurry because it was thundering outside and I didn't want the poor piggies to get wet.

Then I used the two holes to cut out the coin slot by cutting from hole to hole on each outer side of the hole. Once this was done I opened each piggy up to peel off the painters tape that was protecting the threads from paper maché and paint.

 Here they are all lined up before I had to make a mad dash to get them and myself inside before we got soaked.

Once I had them inside I glued on some google eyes for fun. I did it because I used hot glue and I didn't want the kids burning themselves, if you have ever gotten high temp hot glue on your finger by accident you know how bad it hurts.

Here are the birthday boys and our guests decorating their Hamms. I decided to stick with washable markers and stickers to make clean up the easiest and fastest.