Cardboard Box Petrol Pump

So the kids have been whizzing around in the toy car this weekend, and while they were playing this morning hubby & I overheard DD saying she needed petrol.  The toy car does have a little petrol cap and we looked out to see DS pouring the contents of his water cup into the hole!  Shortly after, I recalled seeing a petrol pump made from a  cardboard box on the web somewhere and before I knew it, I was well on my way to recreating one for my little guys to play with.

Luckily we had some large cardboard boxes for recycling sitting in the garage so I found one I thought would be the best shape and taped it together.  I knew were were going to paint it so didn't want to use ordinary sticky tape as the paint wouldn't adhere -instead I used black "electrical" tape, which would blend in with it being painted black.  Then I set the kids to work with the paintbrush.

After the paint had dried, I cut out some letters (from foam sheets) and stuck them on the front, along with a counter & some buttons / dials.  You could be much more elaborate than I was but I had two little people dancing around me waiting for the end product!

I used an old spray cleaning bottle and a piece of hose to make the pump.  I cut a hole in the base of the bottle and slotted the hose into it - it was quite a tight fit so I didn't need to worry about it falling out.  Then I cut another hole in the bottom of the cardboard box to slot the other end of the hose into.  Finally, I cut a large hole in the side of the box to hook the "pump" into.

I had intended to make the sign on top swivel round with one side reading OPEN and the other CLOSED but I found that it wasn't sturdy enough to withstand the turning so I taped it into place with just the OPEN side showing.  This was made from two oval pieces of card stuck together with a straw taped between them...the straw was the weak link, it was too flimsy!  A stick (or even a pencil) would have been better.  I wrote the OPEN sign on with glitter glue.

They loved it and played with it for ages, taking it in turns to be the petrol pump attendant versus the car driver.