Cardboard Tube Batman

Here’s a fun bit of ‘pure making’ for a rainy day, this simple Batman project is made entirely from just one cardboard tube, with no leftovers or waste.

You’ll need a toilet roll tube, a pair of scissors, a pencil, and some tape, preferably masking tape. Then to colour and finish the model you could use a variety of approaches, you could colour it with a marker, paint it, or you could use some coloured paper and PVA glue to paper mache it, which is what I’ve done. The video above is great to see the stages and the basic idea but if you need a bit more help I’ve created a ‘recipe’ and some more in-depth instructions below.

Cardboard Tube Batman Instructions

This is a pretty straightforward project and you can simply follow the 7 stages in the instructions above.

If you want a little more detail, here’s some additional notes to help . . . .

1 - Push one side of the tube gently near the edge and it will begin to collapse in, this will make the two ‘ears’ stand up and the top of the head will flatten.

2 - Draw a ‘shield’ shape on the front of the tube. This will be the face shape, but from the bridge of the nose down, so you need to leave a bit of space at the top for the eyebrows and eyes. The point at the bottom of the shield shape can be right at the bottom of the tube. When you are happy with the shape, cut it out.

3 - Next, cut out the triangle between the two ears at the top. If you want the ears to be stronger you can wrap a bit of tape around each one to secure them.

4a - Tape the face back into position pushing it forward slightly so that the jaw juts out. This is possibly the hardest part as you might need to put some tape on the inside of the tube which is fiddly. You can put tape on the outside too, you can see I have in stage 5 so it doesn’t matter.

4b - You can also get the nose and eyebrows ready. These are all made from the triangle you cut out from between the ears. Fold the triangle down the centre, then cut off two strips from the fatter end.

5 - Tape the triangle onto the centre of the face to make the nose shape. Then tape the two other pieces on to make each eyebrow. These are taped on their sides and in an inverted ‘v’ shape to make the serious expression.

6 - At this stage you can colour-in the details with a marker, or just paint the model as it is, but I like to use paper mache as it makes the model stronger. I’ve watered down some PVA glue (about 50/50) and used some old tissue paper, you could use old wrapping paper, an old paper bag, or you could use regular tissue, kitchen roll etc and then paint it afterwards. I’ve obviously used the black paper above the bridge of the nose, on the ears, and around the back of the head to make it look like the costume.

7 - Again, you could paint or draw the features on. I’ve cut out two white paper triangles and glued them on for the eyes, and then just stuck on two very thin strips of cardboard to make lips.

This simple idea uses a process I call ‘pure making’ where each and every part of the original material gets used. You don’t have to do this, I just find it fun. You could use other bits of card or other scrap materials to add different parts of the design. You could make a ‘torso’, or even the whole body out of other tubes or different materials. Or you could try using the same process to make other superheroes or villains.