AT-AT plant stand

The AT-AT plant stand was one of the first Star Wars related craft things we made, it was partly made from an idea I had seen in a book and partly made up because we didn't necessarily have all the things it suggested you needed - we do lots of improv in this house!

I didn't think at this point this would be the start of so many SW related projects, or that I'd blog about them, so apologies for the lack of step by step photos.

We started with:
A small(ish) house plant trough
4 Pringles tubes (hard times eating all those)
An old Margarine tub
Cardboard toilet roll
Silver masking tape
Some plants
and lots and lots of patience


The first thing we did was to cut the toilet roll in half and attach to one end of the trough using some tape - this becomes the neck of the AT-AT. The margarine tub is attached to the other end for the head, I think the shape looked best upside down.
I found it easiest to cover the trough and tub in silver tape completely before I joined thins together, and then attached them using even more tape (we went through lots of tape!)

We then applied the same principle to the legs - one Pringles tube per leg; first covered in tape then stuck to the underneath of the trough at the appropriate places.  It was quite fiddly, but luckily they are quite sturdy and I found it easiest to stand them all up, place the trough on top and then blast it with the tape until they were stuck.  The 'knees' of the AT-AT are just the lids of the crisp tubes, again covered in tape (I mentioned you'd need a lot right?) and stuck to the legs.

The last thing we did was to roll up some take to make the blasters on the front of the head, you could easily use pipe cleaners for this I think.

Assuming you're not physically stuck to the plant trough at this point you should stand back (squint a bit) and hopefully admire your handiwork.... then add some plants...

I found that little fingers mostly enjoyed the very sticky tape part the most and of course 'supervising'.

 


Ok, so it's not going to win any awards, and you can't really move it about too much for fear of the legs dropping off... but it has the general feel of an AT-AT and it certainly kept us amused for a couple of days :)