Monday Craft: Paper Mache Piggy Banks

The craft project on our Summer Activity Schedule for this week was for a Paper Mache Piggy Bank.  I originally had this craft planned for later in the summer, but moved it up to this week, because I am so tired of seeing this, everywhere:

Can you see what is spread all over the carpet?  Coins, everywhere...

My son had a ceramic piggy bank, but he had chipped away at the opening, so he could get the coins out. I gave him a cup to keep his coins in.  That wasn't a good solution either because he just kept dumping his coins everywhere.  So I decided we needed a piggy bank that could not be opened and spilled!

This actually turned out to be more of a two day project because the paper mache needed to dry overnight before we could paint it.

This is what we used to make our paper mache coin banks:
2 plastic coffee containers
cut up strips of newspapers, about 1 inch by 4 inches
flour/water glue (1 cup flour, 4 cups boiling water mixed together)
hot glue gun
paint, paint brushes
exacto knife
modge podge

Just look at this picture!  I'm not sure what is going on, but she is obviously antagonizing him somehow...

First I hot glued down the lid to the coffee containers to make it more secure. Then we started layering on the newspaper strips soaked in the flour glue mixture.

After we applied several layers of the glue soaked newspaper, I set the canisters out in the sun to dry.

The next day they were dry and rock solid, ready to be painted.
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They worked so hard!  After the paint dried, I coated the piggy banks with a good coat of Modge Podge.  Once the Modge Podge was dry, I used my exacto knife to cut a coin slot in the top of the bank.

We've already started filling up the coin banks, hopefully they will hold up...

I will be linking up to some of the fabulous Linky parties found here.