Recycled Cardboard Lion Sculpture

Want to make a Lion out of cardboard? Well, this is the instructable for you!!!!

For today's project you will need:

Cardboard (tons of it)

Cutting Knife

Pencil

Ruler

Cutting Mat

Wire (Is Optional) I am challenging myself to use no glue

You can choose any animal you want to do it it could be a bear or a horse. After look for some pictures of that animal. But for this project, we will mainly focus on a lion.

In a notebook sketch the animal you are doing and draw the shape out it. You want to analyze the different components which make up the animal. You want to visuallize all sides of the animal and study them. For example, if you are making a Giraffe you want to highlight it's long neck or an Elephant's trunk & big ears.

When drawing the animal or lion you want to examine the body and draw two spines & cut out. One spine is optional but more is better because it is more stable.

For this step, this is where analyzing your animal comes in handy. Most animals are made up of circles that give them form. For my lion, I cut about 10 about the same size circles. After you have your cut out circles you want to cut out some slots to insert into the spine. The slots in the circles should be about 5 millimeters wide but it also depends on the thickness of your cardboard.

For your animal you might want to add some legs or else it might not stand up. For the lion I made I added two layers of legs for more support. I added a little slot in the middle of the lion's foot so both layers stick together. At the top of the cutout, legs add two 5-millimeter slots and then insert them to the circles on the body.

After attaching all of the legs of your animals it should look a little something like this.

I poked a hole at the end of the lion's body on both spines. Get a piece of cardboard and cut out the shape of a lion's tail with a hole at the top. Cut a string of cardboard and push it through the hole. Before pushing the piece completely into both holes add the tail to the piece. Now you can push the piece of cardboard with the tail attached.

Now making the lion's mane is almost as easy as making the circles but just cut triangles. Again you will need to cut 5-millimeter slots to insert into both spines. I made four layers of mane with different sizes to give it dimension. On one layer of the mane add ears and place behind the layer with eyes.

Cut out several small circle/oval layers for the lion's snout. Also, cut out the 5 mm slots and inserts them. After these several layers, make a slice of bread like shape with circles on the edge. Cut out the circles which will be the lion's eyes. At the front, I cut out some pieces of wire and added them as whiskers. It's a nice little detail you can do as an extra.

Congratulations you are now finished with your recycled cardboard lion!!!!!!!