Finger Tips

Where do you keep your CDs?

At Finger Tips, this guy looks after ours. We call him a CD saurus!

What a great way to show them off and keep them tidy, eh? He's really easy to make. If you want to have a go, here's how.

The first thing you need to find yourself is a large piece of card. It needn't be coloured: you can always paint it later.

You'll also need a dinner plate and a side plate because drawing round these will help you to make the shape of the dinosaur's body. So, first of all put the side plate in the bottom left hand corner of the card, and draw round it.

Now you need the side plate again.

Put this on the card, half covering the larger circle that you've just made.

Draw round it.

Now draw round the side plate once more, to the right of the last circle you just drew.

That's the template finished. The left side will become the head, and the right side will be the tail.

Now you should use the circles as a guide to draw a dinosaur shape like the one that you can see opposite.

Add some spikes to the tail for added effect, and then cut the whole thing out.

Once you've finished cutting the body shape out, use it as a templete. Draw round it on another piece of card and cut this out too.

You should now have two identical dinosaur shapes.

Now you need to clip the two dinosaur cut-outs together using paperclips.

Attach paperclips to the head and tail, to keep the two body pieces in place.

For the next step, get yourself a CD case and put a sticker or a piece of tape half way down to act as a guide.

Place the CD case in the middle of the dinosaur's back, with half of the CD in the body shape and the other half sticking off.

Draw round it.

Repeat this three more times on the left, and another three times on the right.

Try to keep the distance between each slot the same.

It's time to make the legs now.

Taking the side plate again, place it half over the edge of your left-over card, and draw around it to give you a semi-circle shape.

Cut the shape out.

Then use it as a template to cut out one more semi-circle.

On each of the semi-circles, draw another, smaller, semi-circle inside and carefully cut out.

(Using a pair of compasses will help you to draw a perfect curve.)

Use these smaller semi-circles as templates to cut two more from the left-over card.

You should now have four small semi-circles in total.

All that drawing round and cutting out will soon be worth it - it's nearly time to start assembling the CD saurus!

But first, place the two larger semi-circles on top of each other, and make two vertical slits in the middle of the straight edges.

Then, get two of the smaller semi-circles and put them on top of each other.

Make a vertical slit in the middle of the rounded edge.

These shapes now slot together like you can see here.

Take one of the large semi-circles and two of the smaller ones, and do this twice to make two legs.

Straighten them up, (you might need to use a bit of tape depending on the thickness of the card that you've used.)

That's one leg completed, so repeat the process for the second.

Then cut two vertical slits in the body - one towards the front, and one towards the back.

Now glue the body together. Place blobs of glue between the two pieces of card that make the tail, each of the spines on the back, and the head.

Once the glue has dried, you can fit the legs to the body.

Open out the body, and attach the legs to the body using the slits.

Now you can decorate your CD saurus!

We gave ours a yellow belly cut from card, some scales drawn on with marker pen, and some tail spikes and toenails cut from scrap pieces of white paper. And eyes of course, to keep an eye on your CDs.

And remember that you can paint your CD saurus any colour you like. After all, who knows for sure what colour dinosaurs were?

Plus of course, the idea can also be adapted for computer disks.