Ice cream stick car in process

So, just over three weeks ago my niece asked me to help her with her school project. She was given an assignment by her teacher to make a sort of cart out of ice cream sticks. Obviously, she wasn't told to buy hundreds of popsicle just for the sticks! That would have only been fun if the project was sponsored by the school! So, since we needed to use our own money (my niece's, not mine) we had to go rather economical as a way of teaching her to spend her money wisely. I went to the store for the ice cream sticks, a refill pack of PVA glue, and a brush. The next day, we started with a drawing of the cart's design that she wanted to make and was actually told to make. And, of course, I said to her 'no, you don't have to make exactly the same design... give it to me!'. So, with my artsy fingers, I made slight changes to the design of the original design that was instructed by the teacher.






First real step was to glue different parts of the cart one part by one part. First part that we made was the base of the cart's frame. Second one was the window/door frame followed by the two bumpers (or, was it the roof first before the bumpers? ummm). And, of course, we let each part of the cart that we created dry out first before gluing them all together into one whole piece. I taught my niece how to use the PVA glue. The glue that the teacher told her to use was actually the yellow smelly one which often reminds me of snot(!). And, to harden the glued sticks, we layered and glued two thin layers of tissue.




And, by the way, it is always fun for me to create something like this. I'm not claiming that this is what I am the best at doing, but I'm pretty good at art and design. Just saying... :))

The roof

We needed to press down the roof using a pile of books to the window/door frame so that it wouldn't bend
So, next step was to add some more minor details like the back cover of the cart and the faux cart's registration number on the front side using a marker.






Two weeks later, we thought of adding some colors to the unfinished cart. So, we went back to the store to buy another brush and some paints. However, we haven't done anything to the cart since then.

Another thing that we will need to work on is the wheels. We will use two empty cans of condensed milk and do whatever we can to make them roll.

Even though it has been three weeks now, I'm not hoping that we will not finish the project! So, just watch for an update blog post that will announce that we're done with it! :D

It won't be anything spectacular, though! :))

EDIT (October 5): The car's done, and here's a link to the picture: click!