Upgrades for The 45 Minute Cardboard Box Car

You’ll love this cute recycled craft you can make and enjoy with your kids! The 45 Minute Cardboard Box Car (now with upgrades!) is so much fun! 

So about five minutes after I finished making The 45 Minute Cardboard Box Car, O started asking for more. “Mommy! This car needs a seat! Mommy! This car needs side mirrors! Mommy! This car needs gas pedals!”  And this continued after preschool, all evening and into the next morning until I relented and upgraded his car. Despite all the requests he certainly spent that entire time playing with it just the way it was and had plenty of fun but you can’t argue with the end user’s expectations, can you? (Oh, and also, please note the extensive scotch tape additions. Like I said, scotch tape is O’s favorite thing ever and he used it to make the car “more prettier!”)

So here’s what we did:

The 45 Minute Cardboard Box Car Upgrades

Cardboard scraps (the cutout windows worked nicely)

2 small empty boxes

Hot glue

Utility Knife

Aluminum 

1. I made the seat first. Since we’re going for utility and not beauty I honestly just glued two empty boxes together and glued them to the inside of the car. End of story. If your kid is older and you think the boxes might collapse when they sit on it, stuff them with newspaper first. 2. To make the gas and brake pedal, and make them sturdy enough for little feet to stomp on, I cut two triangles that were roughly 30/60/90 triangles. Make sure one corner is actually 90 degrees so it sits flat in the box but otherwise eyeball it. I just cut one and used it to trace the others. Then I cut a 3 inch wide strip that was as long as the long sides of the triangles:

Glue the strip to the long sides of the triangles with hot glue like this:

Repeat to make another pedal (or two more if your car is a manual transmission!)Then put glue along the bottom and back edges and glue them inside the car! 

3. To make side mirrors, first I cut out two shapes like this:

Can you see how I also cut into that flap on the side through the middle? I bent each half of that flap in opposite directions:

Then I cut a smaller rectangle of cardboard, wrapped it in foil and glued it to the mirror:Finally I used those bent flaps, one going forward, and one going back, to glue the side mirror onto the car. O was totally delighted with these upgrades and they only took me about an extra 15 minutes to do (including cleanup) which still brings the cardboard box car to only an hour. 

Checking his blind spot in the side mirror…

Oh, and while I was working, O continued to decorate his car. I thought maybe this was meant to be a bumper, but “No Mom, the paper and tape just make it look cooler!” Ok then, whatever you say! 

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Cassie May

Craft and Knitwear Designer at Little Red Window Design

Welcome to Little Red Window! I’m Cassie, a professional craft and knitwear designer working in the field for more than 10 years. I have a degree in Art History from Northwestern University and a Master's Degree in Architecture and Design from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. I've designed more than 300 separate knitting patterns, hundreds of craft projects, and I love to bring joy to your crafts and knitting with well-designed, easy to understand tutorials and patterns.

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