A Cardboard Fire Truck

Oh, what joy! Another fire truck, only there is Santino in this one! He couldn't keep his hands off and played with it until until it was ripped into pieces. Am I upset about this? Not at all! I am happy that he loved my craft so much!

I was inspired by this cardboard school bus. Such a neat idea, and I just felt so energetic about it, that I wanted to immediately make a fire truck. It had to be a fire truck, no buses, no other kinds of trucks.

 This is what I used: 3 small cardboard boxes, a little more cardboard for the ladder, paper towel tube, wooden dowels, white school glue, hot glue gun, aluminum foil, construction paper.

I used the inside boxes from Santino's toy railroad box, they were just the perfect size. I covered them with red construction paper, which I cut to size plus overlaps and glued with white paper glue.

I added blue construction paper for the windows, drew the wipes with a black marker. I made the "grill" with white paper.

To give this fire truck a more authentic look, I glued Santino's photo from one of our multiple visits to the local fire station on the driver seat side. He is not looking at us here, but it was the only one matching the size. Nevertheless, Santino immediately recognized himself on it.

The wheels were made with paper towel tube rings. I cut out 4 rather wide rings for the wide and stable wheels. To make them heavier, I stuffed these rings with the tissue paper, then poked a hole in the middle for the dowels.

Then I cut out circles out of black construction paper.

Ok, this one needs a little bit more explanation. I traced the size of the wheel, and then added about a half of the wheel's width to the diameter, and cut out this large circle.

I scored this extra width all along the diameter to make "petals", but leaving the center intact.

 

I glued the center to the wheel (the tissue stuffing worked great for this), and then I glued each "petal" one by one, overlapping the next one on top of the previous one. Did I explain this right? Have I lost you?

Well, anyways, just look at the photos. When I did this on both sides of each wheel, I had in my hands 4 wheels with textured tracks, just like the real tires would have.

Then I cut 2 wooden dowels so that they would be long enough to fit 2 of these wheels, one on each side of the truck, and then hot glued them to those wheels. I didn't hot glue the dowels to the truck, no.

I added the rims to the wheels, too; made them out of foil.

To make a ladder, I stuffed a paper towel tube ring again with tissue paper, and covered it with aluminum foil. Then I glued it on top of the truck. This made a ladder holder. I made a ladder out of cardboard strips, hot glued everything together and covered it in foil. Then I glued it on top of the holder. I shouldn't have done that, as I understood too late. Santino wanted to lift the ladder, and eventually he ripped it apart. I will fix it, maybe even tonight, and will post the update.

I didn't get a chance to add more details, like headlights and signal lights, because Santino, as soon as he saw the fire truck, grabbed it off the table and ran away with it. He had so much fun playing with this simple cardboard toy, that I decided that its OK without the lights.

 

And, that's it. That's how I made a cardboard fire truck. I had as much fun making it, as Santino had playing with it!