Are your kids obsessed with Minecraft?
The Creeper Head is straightforward and great fun to make with your kids.
To find out how we did it in six easy steps, read on!
Step one: Gather your materials
Assemble the troops
Raid the art cupboard or get yourself to the crafts store. You will require:
Step two: Measure and line your box
Before you really do anything, you need to gauge what size squares you are going to use on the box so you can plot the layout and the mouth area (which will later be the eye hole) accordingly.
Try and find a common denominator for the height, width and depth of your box. We found a suitable size to be around 5cm (2 inches) per square - this fit in close enough to basically cover the whole thing. Then get your grid sketched out on the box in pencil.
Time to draw in your squares
You can also have a look at the photo below (or Google it) to gauge the design of the Creeper’s face. Note that we used smaller squares (by half, 2.5cm or 1 inch) around the bottom of the mouth to make it look how it’s supposed to.
Not exactly Da Vinci but you get the idea
If your calculations aren’t totally exact don’t worry; you will have paint underneath the squares anyway. Any gaps will look pretty natural - Creepers are weird looking things at the best of times.
Step three: Cutting and painting
First things first - to avoid having your charge run headfirst into walls with his cardboard helmet on (assuming that wasn’t your plan the whole time), you’ll need some eye holes in your box. Cut out the bits you don’t need in your grid according to the design below, and then paint the entire outside of the box in a dark colour of your choice.
We found dark green worked well, but black or brown would be fine too.
Step four: Cut your coloured paper and stick it on
This bit is pretty boring, so unless your charges have an affinity for cutting out endless 5cm x 5cm green quadrilaterals you may want to prop them up in front of Shrek 2. Draw on and chop out a million squares and glue them onto your box in as random a pattern as you can come up with.
Remember black squares to go over the mouth/ eye part (what even is that?) and don’t worry about the kids’ empty eye hole - we’re coming to that now.
Step five: Finishing touches
Once everything is dry you can tidy up any outstanding bits of paint you’ve missed, glue down curling corners, and sacrifice an old sock (or pair of tights) in the name of art by chopping it to a suitable size and stapling it over the eye hole from the inside (helps if you can dislocate the stapler arm!). Be sure to sand or band down any metal parts sticking out from the staples.
Step six: Get scary!
Hooray! It’s finally time for your charge to terrify his grandmother! Take some photos, apologise to his mum and be thankful that your arts and crafts activity for the day is officially complete.
Zing!
Footnote: Things you could do differently (aka: better than we did):
Enjoy and happy crafting!!!