I decided to make felt food for my bestie's little girl's christmas present this year. As I was searching pinterest for a themed idea, i came across Apartment Therapy's Toy Grill out of a plastic bowl and wooden dowls. Awesome! A little more searching, and I found that Ever Never Again had used that same tutorial with a couple adjustments to make it look like a weber grill (or in my case, a BIG GREEN EGG!)
As Ever Never Again suggested, I went ahead and made two at the same time. It was well worth it. As it was a time consuming project (even with my husband's help), I wouldn't want to go back and do it again later!
The other thing I did a little differently was to make the grate sit flush in the grill. Neither my husband nor myself like the way the lid sat on top of the grate, so he trimmed one side down, sanded and touched up the paint. Now the lid rests on the bottom bowl and the grill is fully closed. It would be interesting to try and put a hinge on the lid and grill so that it would stay open like the big green egg, but we decided we had already invested enough time and money so went without!
I used regular syrofoam to make the charcoal briquettes, but was not able to use spray paint on them, and ended up using a foam brush and acrylic paint...sooo much effort! Never Ever says she used spray paint...maybe her foam was different than mine, but mine started dissolving in the spray!
I like how they turned out! I hot glued them in the bottom of the grill and glued the grill rack on too. The styrofoam is flakey, and my daughter was covered in bits of black foam when she would try to play with the charcoal.
The ash tray on the bottom was REALLY hard to find. I ended up using a large tuna can, but it only fit on the green grill and not the purple one. I need to spray paint a peanut butter lid for the purple one. I recommend finding a good size can or lid FIRST, then fitting your triangle pieces on where the lid fits best!
The two of these grills cost about $35 to make both. I know I got the dowels for $12, the bowls were $2 each at Wal-mart (mine are 11" diameter), one block of styrofoam was $3. Walmart sells spray paint really cheap - they had black, white and grey a for $1 a can! I really wanted silver so got a can for $4 (i needed about 1 1/2), still $4 cheaper than home depot or lowes! The handles came from Lowe's or HD and were about $2 each. We had hot glue and screws on hand.
If you are making the lid with the handle, don't forget to buy some shorter screws than what comes in the package! We didn't, and to save us a trip BACK to the store, my husband cut the screws to fit. Would have been a lot easier to just have the right sized screws to start with!
I made some fun BBQ felt food to go with the grills and later in the week I will share more pictures with links to tutorials! Stay tuned!
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