Tinkering Our Work: Creative Constructions Material Ideas
Tinkering Our Work: Creative Constructions Material Ideas
Material Ideas
While collecting and selecting materials, think about what kinds of construction you hope to explore. For example, cardboard and paper can be cut with scissors and decorated with markers to make a build personally meaningful. Straws or masking tape can make for flexible connections and movement.
Types of materials fall loosely into 3 categories: raw materials, connectors, and tools. Below are ideas for starting points in each category.
Pro tip: Choosing a material from one category and using it as another can result in exciting discoveries to push your construction further. For example, we normally think of cardboard as a raw material. Asking "how could we use cardboard as a connector?" opens up new possibilities.
Raw Materials
- Natural materials: twigs, branches, leaves.
- Cardboard boxes
- Thin cardboard: cereal and pasta. packaging
- Cardboard tubes: paper towel and toilet paper rolls (derders).
- Multiples: lots of the same thing like dry pasta, strawberry baskets, or toothpicks.
Connectors
- Hardware: like screws and nuts.
- Brads
- Masking tape
- Clips: binder clips, paper clips.
- Tethers: like string or flagging tape.
Tools
- Scissors
- Cardboard cutter: two of our favorites are corrugated cardboard cutters and cardboard scissors.
- Hole punch: we find heavy duty hole punches to be more comfortable for repetitive use.