Tiny cardboard ship tutorial

My little boys and I made a few of these little tiny cardboard ships the other day. They wanted a little ship for their whales to swim underneath...

Once we'd designed and made a template, we sat down and made lots and lots of little ships using cardboard from an old box, craft glue, a wooden skewer and paper. If you'd like to put your ship in water, you could use waxed cardboard from an old milk or juice carton.

Here's the rough template we came up with (below). You could save this photo and print it off to make your own boats. Here's how...

Cut out this template and draw around it onto a piece of cardboard. Cut it out and fold it into shape, using glue to secure it all together. We used clothes pegs to hold it in place while the glue dried.

For the base inside that holds the sails up, just cut out a small rectangle of cardboard and fold it to give it three sides. Then poke a hole in the middle (for the skewer). Position it into the boat with glue and poke the skewer piece into the hole.

You can make sails however you like. I made three little sails out of some paper from old book pages. Just poke holes at the top and bottom edges of the paper and thread them onto the skewer. Have fun!