Toy car road track and garage play set creation for my little girl

Toy car road track and garage play set creation for my little girl

So my little girl loves playing with cars. I started looking around for those garage play sets, but they are incredibly pricey and also rather small!

I ended up building one from boxes and things I had around the house, and created my own one. 

I have a huge Pinterest addiction, so I searched for some images for inspiration and started planning. I have to admit, I didn't really know what I was doing, and made it up as I went along, but it turned out well in the end. 

Seeing these project on Pinterest not only inspires me, but I always go into them knowing that they probably won't turn out looking like the pictures I see. 

This project had it's fair amount of bumps in the road, and I'll be sharing all of these as I go along explaining. 

What I used:

The roof of a box house we built previously (a large flat piece of board)

Leftover party boxes

Leftover paper party cups

Leftover party popcorn box

Acrylic paint from our crafts stash

Pipe cleaners from our crafts stash

Pom poms from our crafts stash

Vinyl for the stripes on the road

Paper straws from our crafts stash

Craft sticks from our crafts stash

An old shoebox

Black and green paint I had left over from another project

Artificial grass I had left over from another project

A glue gun

Steps:

As I mentioned before, I didn't really follow any steps in particular, I made it up as I went along with the project. 

First I painted the large cardboard with the green paint I had left over and left it to dry. We live in Cape Town, and it is currently winter, so getting things to dry can take some time. I also painted the shoebox black, the popcorn box pink and one of the cups purple. 

I took one of my husband's boxes, he bought a leaf blower a while back and the box was the ideal size to cut strips for the upper level roads. I cut the box into strips and painted them black, as well as some of the paper cups. Be aware that black paint needs more than one layer though. 

As I waited for all of these to dry, I started making the trees. I simply played around with the pipe cleaners, making loops so they ended up looking like some type of tree. I glued some pom poms to it for a 3D effect as well as some paper straws for the trunks. 

Cut some craft sticks in half (old ice cream sticks would work perfectly as well) and glue them together to form a base for the trees to stand on. Then glue the bottom of the straws (the tree trunks) to the base. 

Glue the tops of the party boxes together and cut off the excess, making them look more like a house. Use a cutter to cut out some doors in your houses and garage. I glued some paper straws, crafts sticks and pipe cleaners around the doors for a finished look. 

I cut the leftover artificial grass into squares and glued them to the large base box, and glued the houses onto the grass, with the little trees in front. Glue the garage to the base box as well. 

Paint the roads, using the black paint (again, more than one layer is needed) and wait for it to dry. 

So here is where one of the bumps occurred. As I wanted to start glueing the road strips for the upper levels, I realised that the strips were soft and bendy from the paint. I ended up placing more cups underneath for support - crisis averted!

Glue the paper cups upside down to the base box, and glue the road strips to the tops of the cups. 

Finish off your creation by cutting vinyl into small strips and sticking them along the roads. Using roller tippex or even white paint would also do the job. 

And there you have it, a cost effective piece of magic for the little one to enjoy!

Since I had all the items in my house and I simply refused to buy anything, this entire project cost me absolutely nothing! 

Mommy for the win!