Cosmic Crafts

Celebrate Earth Day every day by joining the voyage of the trash-ship Enterprise. Its ongoing mission: to create delightful playthings from household junk, to confine its operations to a discarded bookcase, and to boldly recycle what no one has recycled before. In other words, gather all those things you’ve been saving in your recycling bins and follow our directions to make a space station inhabited by Trash Masters, an eco-groovy race of recyclers. Create specialized vehicles, conveyors, and robots and invent new accessories and components. Whether your family chooses to make just one element or the entire station, set your phasers to “recycle” and prepare to have so much fun with trash that you’ll feel graced with waste. Litter-ly.

 

The Trash Masters

Your kids will love creating and playing with these miniature action figures.
Two-Liter Transporter

It’s the fastest way to travel this side of the universe. Just give the Two-liter Transporter a quick turn, and the Trash Master or robot inside “disappears” behind a trick piece of silvery paper.
Space-Waste Vehicles

Drive the sturdy, smooth-riding Junkmobile and the Satellite Recycler around the neighborhood on regular collection days, or park beneath the Waste Shooter for a quick fill.
Trash Tram

Kids can haul loads up and down in this berry basket elevator.
Control Panels

Everyone knows you can’t run a space station without them.

OTHER IDEAS

•Roll-on Robot’s empty stick-deodorant body (short or tall) sports glittery pipe cleaner antennae. Bring him to life with googly eyes, stickers, or drawn-on facial features.
•Decorated metal jar lids tell planetary time
•The Satellite Recycler monitors galactic refuse with its miniature pie-pan dish
•The Body Shop dial (a coffee creamer cup attached to a plastic coffee can lid) turns thanks to simple pipe cleaner technology
•The play station’s Control Panels feature aluminum-foil-covered boxes and knobs that turn
•Poster tack holds wall and floor coverings made from wrapping paper, Bubble Wrap, and aluminum foil to the bookcase
CRAFTING TIPS

Two secrets to making almost every play station item:

1. Perforating plastic (necessary to thread a paper fastener, bamboo skewer, or pipe cleaner through plastic): Use a pushpin to make a starter hole, then push the tip of your scissors, or a Phillips screwdriver, into the hole and rotate it to widen the opening (a parent’s job).

2. Pipe cleaner fasteners (for chairs, satellite dish, knobs, and trucks): Per Tip #1, poke a hole in each item wherever it is to be attached to another (some spout lids already have a hole, although it may need to be widened with pointy scissors). Twist the top of a pipe cleaner into a small anchoring loop, then thread the bottom through the holes in both items, as shown at left. Make a large loop at the bottom of the pipe cleaner and twist it until the items fit together snugly. Press the loop flat against the bottom item (as you would a paper fastener).