Cardboard Toy: Make a Rubberband Gun Out of Cardboard

For today's Cardboard Project I'll show you how to make a Rubberband gun in short time with simple materials. When I was playing with them, we always had to get our hands on wood, get permission and help with tools etc. No Longer!

Supplies You'll need

1. Cardboard- this rifle used a piece about 30 inches x 10 inches. You'll want twice as much on hand.
2. One clothes pin (or a small binderclip like the one to the right will suffice).
3. Tape of any sort. Tan masking tape, blue painters tape, gaffers tape whatever.
4. Sharpie marker or other pen/ pencil.
5. X-Acto knife
6. Safe surface to cut on. Ideally a mat made for this purpose. The X-Acto will cut through to your floor or table without sufficient protection!
7. Double sided mounting tape to mount the clothes pin. 

First, draw a template of your rubberband gun on the cardboard and cut it out (conserve cardboard).

Now use your template to trace the image on the remaining cardboard stock as shown with 1/2 to 1 inch margin between the mirror images. It is important that the butt and tip of  the two images are in line so that when cut and folded they line up with each other.

Next cut the mirror images out leaving them connected.

Use a ruler to score LIGHTLY along the top edge of the rubberband gun as shown. The goal is to make the folding easy, do not cut all the way through; *Metal rulers are best when using a razor.

Fold the cardboard along these lines and tape either around as I did, or along the seam.

Use the double sided mounting tape to attach the clothes pin. do some testing and make sure to chose a comfortable location for the clothes pin before you tape it.  As suggested above, you can use a binder clip if that is all you've got. They work well but can wear out. Usually I'll tape these on by wrapping a few loops of tape through the mouth of the clip.

For riffles or other longer guns tie two rubber bands together to get the desired length. Too tight a rubber band can go off unexpectedly.

You can even make cardboard targets.

RULES:

• Never shoot at people or animals.
• Never point your rubber band gun at people or animals.
• Point the gun at the floor while you are loading it to prevent accidents.

Color it if you want. Happy Hunting!

Dioramas

Dioramas are landscapes typically built for gaming, education and more importantly, for fun. They can be miniature or life size. Diarrhea is frequent liquid bowel movements. Playing with dioramas is fun, playing with diarrhea... not so much.

To build a diorama first decide whether it will be flat and open as the one featured in this article or more vertical and contained (like a cliff or mountain). Will you build your diorama with complicated topography with hills and valleys, or again like the one shown here, have a more simple landscape. What will be the theme? Barbie, historical, fantasy? The answers to these questions will determine the supplies you will need. Hills can be carved out of foam or made by layering foam core, then covered with the appropriate material. When cutting foam core a hooked X-Aacto blade works very well, but a regular X-Acto will work. The ideal is a hot wire, building one can be a project in its own right. Always use an appropriate respirator when cutting foam with a hot wire. We made a very simple diorama using; Foam core, a roll of fake grass, blue construction paper for water, sand paper for dirt, some plastic trees and grass from

Michael's, & Army men we had, rocks and wood from the yard, spray mount (spray glue), and spray paint. Our cork boat from our extreme gutter racing post is still around and is making a special guest appearance; recycle and reuse. For the record, I got a nice stash of heavy card stock and cardboard outside the art store near my place. It was dirty and no good for commercial use. They put it out for free, I took it. You can get a lot of the items for this type of project for free.

We started by cutting out a simple land mass and spray painting it a dark green. Then we played around with placement of the dirt and water, played by sandpaper and blue paper, and rolled the grass in. After everything is where we want it we glue it down with some heavy tack spray mount.

Spray a thin layer of glue on the underside over a drop cloth so you can get glue on the edges of the object. It is best to do outside for better ventilation and to keep things clean. Spray mount is great because it will dry slowly and allow time for placement and moving objects if it doesn't look quite right. Also, it will hold well over time. Spray mount works best when it has large flat surface to surface contact. Glue guns work well for gluing rocks and trees into position. The trick to getting a glue gun to work well is to put the object together while the glue is still hot. The faster the better, but be safe.
As always the purpose of this Blog is to kick start not spoon feed. So... Have Fun imagining, building, and playing.