Potty Pirate

The other day Chace (my four year old) saw me coming out of the bathroom after changing the toilet paper roll. I know, random but I have a point. Before I got to the recycling bin he said “Mommy, can we make something with that?” The craft loving designer in me had her heart grow three sizes that day (oh, whoops, that was the Grinch) but needless to say I was happy. DIY something crafty? Of course!

I asked him what he’d like to make and he said “a pirate”. Of course he did. Because he couldn’t have just said something simple like “an orange toilet paper roll”. But my little four year old wanted a pirate so this mommy was going to do her best to dream up one with what I had on hand. 

Oh, and did I mention that Chace’s favourite show right now is ‘Jake and the Neverland Pirates‘? Yo ho let’s go!

Ahoy Matey!

Okay, so obviously this is not the best thing ever crafted BUT, more important than that is what this means. Having Chace ask me to make him something out of a piece of material destined for the recycle bin was a bigger question than that. What I heard was a little boy asking his mommy to come and ‘play’ with him. 

To digress for a moment, with all the ‘stuff’ going on in the world these days and the horrible events unfolding in Boston and all over the world right now this simple question was a reminder. A reminder to take a deep breath, to get off the computer, log off of Facebook, turn off the news. Let the dishes sit dirty in sink, don’t worry about Chace’s bath night that night and needing to rush because of it. Just. Be. Present. Sit down. Make a silly craft and soak up some of the best medicine the world has to offer (in the form of a four year old boy who wants his mommy to do a craft with him). 

I’m a big believer in doing stuff like that. Of course I love my blog, I have freelance commitments, a full-time job and I love my house being tidy. But more that all of that, I love my family. My Chef Kev, my dog Belle and my little nugget Chace. Spending time with each of them is a silent way to say “you are worth all of my attention. You. Nothing else matters right now”. Time to breathe.

Easy to forget to do at times isn’t it?

So, to sit down and make a little pirate for my adorable little crew mate as he finished his dinner was something I was more than happy to do. 

Impromptu as it was, I just went upstairs to my craft bin and grabbed what I had on hand. It didn’t need to be the best pirate ever to be valuable. 😉

I grabbed a bunch of leftover felt and pipe cleaners (used here at one of my annual Christmas Craft Night’s for making elves!) as well as some other left over pipe cleaners, little pompoms and googly eyes (from a kid’s Halloween craft party where we made spiders out of mini pumpkins). I also grabbed some white glue (and not pictured but grabbed after was a paint brush, coloured markers, a T-pin and my glue gun).

Originally I was going to get Chace to help me make the pirate but it was a bit too difficult for his skill level (he just turned four as mentioned) and he said he wanted to watch me make it as he finished his dinner. Good gig kid.

If you have any desire to make a little pirate then you’re in luck as a I documented the steps. If not, then I hope you like pictures of ‘how to make a pirate’ because you’re going to see a lot of them. Buckle up.

First, line up your ‘pant’ felt about halfway up the toilet paper tube. Disclaimer – none of this has to be perfect. I will show you evidence to support this statement below. You have been warned. 

Apply some white glue to your tube.

Wrap the felt around.

PANTS. Done. As easy as dressing a toddler. Scratch that. Strike the oxymoron from the record.

Next up was a shirt. I chose my blue felt (well, Chace did) and decided to wrap this one a bit differently for interest. I started on a bit of an angle…

So that when finished it had a neat ‘seam’. As you can see I used the ‘cut a strip and apply glue’ method as mentioned above for the pants.

I overlapped the pants too just for fun (like a real shirt).

Moving along to the hair now. I made simple cuts to create some hair texture…

And glued this on as well. This piece was not as long as I didn’t want the ends to meet. Have to leave room for a face!

It was about this point that Chace exclaimed, “Mommy, this is a really cool pirate!”. Melt my heart kid.

This little pirate needed a hat and I’ll admit, I totally winged this part as well.

I folded my red fabric in half and just started cutting, figuring it out as I went.

I knew my pirate hat should have some sort of a ‘bill’ that was big and floppy. The rest I just made up. It looked like this after I was done.

Here is where I used my glue gun. I glued the top part (where the fabric folds) together so that the top stayed closed. If not then the hat would have looked like a big round ball on his head.

I glued the hat on to my pirate and added some googly eyes as well!

He kind of looks like a bandit here! Oh well, perfection was not my goal here remember? 😉

A pipe cleaner and pompom later and we had a belt. I used the glue gun here too. I cleaned up the rough edges with scissors after (where the glue strings are).

To add the arms I used my T-pin and poked a hole.

Then I popped in a pipe cleaner, pulled it down (through the bottom) and tied a knot in the end. Then I pulled the arm back out to the point where the knot stopped it and trimmed the arms to size.

Every little pirate needs a sword right? Well luckily I had a pipe cleaner that could turn in to one!

To make the handle of the sword, make a small loop and twist the pipe cleaner end back on itself.

Next, fold the long end roughly in half.

Bend the right side out like a little blade and twist the bottom end back on to your handle shaft.

SWORD!

With some coloured markers, draw on a lopsided face as well as some buttons and feet and guess what? You. Are. Done.

And the best part? This.

Cutest toilet paper roll ever. And cutest toilet paper roll player.

So that is the tale of the Potty Pirate. The tale of Chace and the Neverland Pirate. The tale of the ‘totally tubular dude”. Aaarrrrrhhhhh! Me’s off to scrub the decks. Actually I’m going to go watch ‘the Voice’ that I pvr’d but same diff right? Ursher baby!