Chronicles of a Stay at Home Dad #6 - How to make cardboard armour....

Well, Ellie and I finally got around to making her some cardboard armour ready for her 'dragon hunt' (hopefully tomorrow, weather and presence of mythological beasts permitting). We went to 'French for Fidgets' on Monday with Elen and her dad, Jason. The girls had a great time and did use a few French words. I was proud of Ellie, particularly as she awoke at 5am and so had every right to be overtired and grumpy. Instead she was vibrant and fun!

After an all too brief afternoon nap we set about measuring her and cutting up some old Amazon packaging. We decided that she needed a helmet, a shield, a breast and backplate(corselet), some armour to cover her thighs (cuisses), lower arms (vambraces) and upper arms (brassard I think...).

We used spray glue to stick tinfoil straight onto the cardboard to make it shiny and "metallic". We used elastic secured with tape for fastenings along with brass paper fasteners to look like rivets and to secure the elastic (and to make a decorative 'E' on the breastplate!). We were more than happy with the results:




Ellie chose the pink feather for her helmet herself (I thought she might go for green or purple... how wrong was I!).

I made the swords without Ellie's assistance as it involved using a saw. I used a 1 metre length of foam pipe-lagging cut in half. A 30cm length of dowel (cut to fit) was placed in one hollow end of the tube and tightly taped. The part sticking out formed the hilt. A guard was fashioned out of cardboard and securely taped on. The beauty of the foam pipe is that we can actually hit each other (gently) without injury! Not that I advocate teaching children about violence but...hey.... swords are part of pur history and hitting a shiny shield or a plastic dragon is fun!

Hence Ellie's maniacal laugh.....