Cardboard Mater Tutorial

Are you Mater fans?  We absolutely love Mater around here! My little boy has started taking like Mater and loves to quote him and I am afraid it has rubbed off on me too.

We used some leftover cardboard boxes from Christmas to make this Cardboard Mater. My kiddos LOVE it and especially had a fun time putting it together! The kids got the new Cars 2 movie for Christmas and loved watching it while playing with "their" mater! We ended up watching both Cars and Cars 2 with their new Mater.

I put together this little tutorial...in case you want to make a Mater! Let me know if you have any questions.

A little side note: I buy most of my diapers over Amazon. They are cheaper then what I can buy them for at Sams and delivered right to my house. We love using the boxes for things like this too:) I buy my diapers through the Subscribe and Save program and get free shipping through Amazon Prime if you are interested you can read more about it here.

I didn't use any paint or markers when making this Mater...mostly because I wanted to keep things simple and I always hate it when the markers come off on my kids clothes/hands while they are playing, plus mater is mostly brown. I just pulled off the outer layer of cardboard to get ride of logos on the box.

Supplies Needed:

scissors/utility blade

1 big cardboard box

1 medium cardboard box

1 piece of black paper

1 foam board (or a couple pieces of white paper)

6 paper plates

black sharpie/marker

1 tin...I used a Stevens hot chocolate tin (for Maters head lights)

Glue Gun

If you want to make your steering wheel spin you will also need:

1 toothpick

1 milk jug/juice lid

Take your bigger box and cut it like the one pictured below. I cut the front flap off and then cut into the side flaps. Use the front flap for the windshield. (Use the picture as your guide)

Tape everything together and fold the back flap out.

With your smaller box you are going to tape the flaps up and then cut into them a bit. If your box is longer in length you  may want to cut it in half.

Next, tape the 2 boxes together putting the back flap from the bigger box over the front of the smaller box for added support.

My little boy really wanted a steering wheel that spinned so:

1- We glued 2 paper plates together and poked holes through the center (You could really use 1 paper plate but we wanted the 3D effect.)

2- I then took a tooth pick and covered it in glue (from hot glue gun and poked it though the box and allowed it to dry. (It doesn't mater if it pokes through the front of the box because it will be covered later.)

3- I then put the plates on the tooth pick and covered the end of the toothpick with glue and glued a lid from a juice bottle on the end to keep it all together.

My little boy decorated the inside of his Mater with Cars stickers he had received for Christmas.

1- Cut an oval out of black paper and glue it to the front of the car (Maters Mouth)

2- Cut out eyes and teeth from white paper/foam board and glue into place (I used foam board for Mater's teeth and eyes because I liked how it gave it a more real/3D look)

3- Draw 2 black circles for Maters Eyes with Sharpie marker (You can also cut out from black paper and glue on)

4- I used the leftover cardboard to make a circular engine and then glue gunned it on

5- Cut tin in half and glue on for headlights (Maters right headlight is broken out in the movie so the can thing works great.)

Next take 4 paper plates and glue on for wheels


Enjoy playing with you new Mater!