Gifting Toilet Paper Tubes

These are amazing contraptions that my aunt and I made. We sold them as a fundraiser for my brother's hearing aid fund. They were a hit! They're super easy to do, plus you can use all those paper tubes you have from the bathroom or kitchen (paper towels). Its important to note that you will have to trim down the paper towel tubes but they work well for some of the goodies that you can put inside.

These are also fabulous for kids to take to school for their Valentines, although the work is monotonous and can cause your munchkins to quickly lose interest. These aren't a once a year craft either, you can make them for Halloween or Fourth of July, even Easter... just switch out the decorations to match.
What you'll need:

Assembly

• Lots of toilet paper/paper towel tubes
• tissue paper (holiday specific: hearts, etc- V-day; spiders, etc- Halloween; stars, stripes, etc-July 4th) $AVINGS TIP: Start stocking up the day after holidays to get clearanced tissue paper
• Curling ribbon (the kind that's about 1/4" thick)
• Ribbon (Stick close to 1/4" or the tube gets overwhelmed) $AVINGS TIP: Check the dollar store/area of your favorite store for cheap ribbon
• Foam stickers (holiday specific again)
• double-sided tape (and Glue Dots if you have them handy)
• Regular stickers (avoid 3D/puffy stickers as they aren't as flexible to the tube and tend to peel off) 

Goodies

• Candy
• Holiday pencils/pens
• Necklaces (the cheaper plastic beaded kind)
• sticker sheets (the kind you use in party favors, not necessarily full sheets)
• Any other fillings you'd like (search the favors aisle in your local party selection for ideas... Just remember its got to fit in about an inch and a half diameter)

Start with cleaning all remaining paper off the tubes. Hopefully you've planned far enough ahead that you have extras of these in bags hanging around, or you know a pregnant lady that has been flying through the TP. Place a piece of double-sided tape on the tube and line up your edge of the tissue paper on it. Using tissue paper wrap the tube leaving about two inches on each end of the tube. (Better to be too long than too short, trust me.) Remember you can layer the tissue paper, I would recommend a solid color under and then top with a patterned paper. You can stick with just solid colored tissue paper but you may need to double up the tissue paper, especially if its a lighter color.

Carefully (so you don't rip it) twist the tissue paper and tie with the curling ribbon. Fill with goodies, and tie the other end of the tube with the curling ribbon. You can use the foam stickers, stickers, regular ribbon, curling ribbon and crayons/colored pencils to further decorate your tubes like ours.

Remember that pencils are longer than toilet paper tubes, so for these you'll have to use paper towel tubes. Trim the tubes to just about a half inch longer than the pencil (otherwise you'll use excess tissue paper that won't be necessary. Save your scraps as you decorate, you never know when you'll use the scrap as a design piece on the next tube.