I have to admit, When I first received the request to make a Cheburashka cubeecraft, My first thought was, “What is a Cheburashka?” I have never even seen the word before the request. In that moment I did what any person would do , I went to Google search. It turns out that Cheburashka is a famous cartoon character over in Russia.
I will not pretend to have even a remote knowledge of the Cheburashka. However, Wikipedia does have a little information on the Cheburashka back story:
“Cheburashka (Russian: Чебурашка) is an iconic Russian classic cartoon character, that later also became a popular character in Russian anecdotes (along with his side-kick, Krokodil Gena). According to the creator of the character, Eduard Uspensky (1965), Cheburashka is a funny little creature, unknown to science, who lives in a tropical forest. Cheburashka accidentally gets into a crate of oranges, eats his fill, and falls asleep. The crate is eventually delivered to a grocery store in an unnamed Russian city (hinted to be Moscow), where the rest of the main story unfolds.
The puzzled store manager finds the creature in the crate when he opens it, and takes the animal out and sits him on the table. The creature’s paws are numb after staying in the crate for so long, and he tumbles down (“чебурахнулся” cheburakhnulsya, a Russian colloquialism meaning “tumbled”) from the table, onto the chair, and then onto the floor. This inspires the store manager to name the little creature “Cheburashka”. (Wikipedia Cheburashka)
I also found one of the cartoons on YouTube. I am so glad it has subtitles otherwise I would have been lost LOL
After completing the “What is a Cheburashka?” research, my next concern was making sure that the cubeecraft looked like a Cheburashka and not a brown square with a face. Since I had never seen one before I looked at every image I could find. (Let me just say, there are a ton of pictures out there. Do a google image search sometime to see what I was up against. 😀 )
Finally I had what I needed to make the Cheburashka cubeecraft. Like my teddy bears, the Cheburashka is sitting down. His large ears are on part two of this two part cubeecraft.
CUBEECRAFT:
Materials needed:
Printer
Card stock
scissors
x-acto knife
To make:
- Cut out each item along the outer black lines.
- Cut along the white on each tab using the x-acto knife
- Cut along each red line using the x-acto knife including the long ones on each side of the head. Be careful not to cut to far.
- Fold along each inner solid white line and slide each tab into the slots created with an x-acto knife to form a cube of the body, arms, and feet, and head. Each tab should slide into the corresponding white line holes.
- Slide the arms through the red slots on either side of the body.
- Slide the feet through the red slots at the base of the body (he should look like he is sitting)
- Fold the ears in half color sides facing out
- Slide the ears on either side of the head. The shaded side of the ears should be facing front.
- Slide the completed body into the red slots on the base of the head.
Cheburashka is now complete To download this cubeecraft click the links below and save them to your computer. Then print and create!
