Drink Local Florida Blog
Upcycling a Craft Beer Box to Make a Toy Car Parking Garage
During
the COVID-19 crisis I've been buying beer in large quantities
directly from local, craft microbreweries. One weekend I decided
to turn these packaging materials into something my kids could
play with: a parking garage for toy Matchbox or Hot Wheels cars.
Here are the steps and materials needed to do this yourself.
Step 1: Buy a ton of Florida craft beer. Please buy it directly from your favorite local breweries, as distribution contracts don't yield as high of margins. This parking garage was made from an open-top cardboard box that holds a case (four 6-packs) of beer. If you buy a lot of crowlers the brewery will likely provide this size and style of box. Pictured first is my haul from four breweries in Manatee county. This box came from Darwin Brewing Co., but I also picked up beer from Motorworks, 3 Keys and Corporate Ladder. I hit up Big Top Brewing and Naughty Monk Brewery plus two of these four breweries the week before. (See that beer haul here.)
Step 2: Gather the need
materials. This included:
- Open-top cardboard box
- Box cutter
- Yellow felt-tip permanent marker
- Black felt-tip permanent marker
- Fine-tip black permanent marker
- Pencil
- Business card and/or Ruler
Step 5: Using a business
card or ruler, draw and properly distance the medians and
parking spaces inside the garage. First do this with a pencil
as you may make changes to your design. Pictured above, you'll
see I designed a one-way flow of traffic with a median or
barrier (thicker black marker drawing) for seperation. I used
a business card because I thought this width would provide a
comfortable distance between cars, but you could go smaller
and fit in more parking spots. Fold or cut the business card
removing approximately one-quarter of the business card as
full length is more than needed for each Hot Wheels sized car.
Matchbox cars are slightly smaller than Hot Wheels.
Step 6: When happy with the parking garage design in terms of traffic flow, parking space size and number of spaces, trace over your pencil drawings with permanent marker. I used the fine-tip marker to draw the parking spaces and the thicker, felt-tip market for the roadway barriers. Lastly, draw directional arrows to help your cars properly find their way through and out of the garage.
Step 7: Playtime! My garage design fit 14 cars, I grabbed this number of toy cars and a roadway mat to set-up a fun, guided play session. We lined the entrance/exit ramp to the garage with the roadway on the mat on an edge by a circus tent. All the cars were driving to the see the clowns and animals at the circus and had to park at this garage.
Step 6: When happy with the parking garage design in terms of traffic flow, parking space size and number of spaces, trace over your pencil drawings with permanent marker. I used the fine-tip marker to draw the parking spaces and the thicker, felt-tip market for the roadway barriers. Lastly, draw directional arrows to help your cars properly find their way through and out of the garage.
Step 7: Playtime! My garage design fit 14 cars, I grabbed this number of toy cars and a roadway mat to set-up a fun, guided play session. We lined the entrance/exit ramp to the garage with the roadway on the mat on an edge by a circus tent. All the cars were driving to the see the clowns and animals at the circus and had to park at this garage.
Posted: March 29, 2020