Ice Cream Parlour Play set DIY
Jessie was playing with a fantastic wooden ice cream set the other day at school pick up time. She had borrowed it from her adorable best friend Marnie (also a daughter of a fab friend). It is gorgeous, but I thought I could have a go at rustling up a less spendy (ie cheap as chips) version for Jessie to have of her very own for her birthday. In the beautiful french set, you get a scoop, 6 flavours, 2 waffle cones, and the box…….
My own children, are well used to my attempts at making things from papier mache, double sided sticky tape, and general junk from around the house. My daughter was very enthusiastic about the project, and how it progressed….my son on the other hand suggested I just buy one for Jessie (somewhat missing the point).
Materials Needed:
- 6 Styrofoam balls
- Paint – 6 colours for the ice-cream, and a further 1 for the box.
- Tinfoil
- Mini wooden spoon
- Masking tape
- Glue & newspaper (for papier mache)
The balls were 20p each, and the only items I had to buy. The rest was stuff I had around the house.
Step1: Make the ice-cream balls
Simply paint each of the styrofoam balls a colour representing an ice-cream flavour. We did:
- Pink – Strawberry;
- Brown – Chocolate;
- Cream – Vanilla;
- Light Green – Mint;
- Orange – Orange; &
- Yellow – Banana.
Make sure you use toy safe paint.
Step 2: Make the ice-cream scoop
The first thing to do is make the cup element of the scoop. Mould tin foil around half of the styrofoam ball to get the right size and shape. Add a few layers for rigidity.Apply masking tape to the whole of the tin foil surface.
The handle of the scoop is a disposable wooden spoon, bulked up with tin foil. Cover it fully in masking tape before painting. The “scoop” painted silver, and the handle pink.
Step 3: Make the icecream parlour
Disposable coffee cups, tin foil and newspaper create a framework of dents that the ice-cream balls can sit in. The whole lot fits inside the a lidded shoe box.

Step 4: Make the icecream cones
My initial plan was to use light brown felt, and add the waffle stripes in either darker brown thread, or dark brown sharpie. I couldn’t however find any of these in our local crafts store, so had to improvise.
Sew zig zag stitch on the curved edge before folding the fabric back on itself, and a seam up the long side to make a cone shape. Turn the fabric so the battery is facing outwards. It should be cone shaped. For more texture, add some puffy paint cross hatching. This would look much better if I had dark brown buffy paint (but luckily 4 year olds are not such purists as me).