If memory serves, I think Pierre (Fiddlerman) made a violin of cardboard or paper when he was little.  So there definitely is a precedent.

Violins made out of cardboard are also used sometimes with little kids, so they can practice the moves until they get their first "real" violin.  So it is a pretty cool idea to do while waiting for your violin to come in. 

There's a free template and instructions for making one here:

http://www.fiddleheads.ca/shop.....mplate.htm

And Shar music actually has a cardboard violin called the "Cherub Box violin" for folks who would rather spend 10$ than have the fun of making such a thing.

[ Suggestion to Pierre: Maybe we should get some nice pics up of some of the more popular models of Fiddlershop violins so people could print them full size to make cardboard violins for kids or while they wait for a real one they've ordered to make it through the mail.  Or heck, to hang on the wall as highly nifty wall art.  Just a thought for ya..]

When I was waiting on my first violin, I cobbled together a 1 string instrument out of some dowelling and small wooden box strung with an old guitar steel B string.  Bow made out of a piece a dowel and "haired" with about 60 lengths of cotton sewing thread.  Used pine pitch from a nearby tree and beeswax to "rosin" it.  It actually did work and while it wasn't very loud, one could play on it a little.

But yeah, most of us have waited by the door, looking for the delivery-person a bunch of times a day waiting for an instrument to arrive, BaldBeardedViolinist.  So ya ain't alone, most of us have been there. 

"New Instrument Day" always feels like it should be an official holiday or something.  Like the moment your new violin gets there, the world should just stop and take the rest of the day off, so you can play with your new toy. LOL

Nah BBV.  I didn't keep it.  A friend of mine liked it, so I let him have it.  It's not unusual for me to make weird things from time to time, or for friends to ask if I plan to keep them.  

It didn't much resemble a violin at all.  The sound box was only maybe 3X4 inches.  Instead of an F-hole, and I gave it the more old fashioned crescent moon shaped soundhole.  So it ended up being called "The Outhouse Fiddle"  LOL 

Back to cardboard topics, though.. If any of your daughters are young enough that they might need a fraction-size violin, you could look up the length of those instruments and print to that size and make one.

There are a few "toys" (really more training tools) that they make/sell for usually very young players as well.   I remember seeing one for sale a while back as a "toddler violin" or something like that. It was basically a wooden dowel with a hole drilled through it and a smaller diameter dowel through the hole.  The ends had small wood balls on them so a little kid wouldn't get hurt on it.  The idea was that a child could play with it by pretending it was a violin and would actually be getting an early introduction to the movements for the bow stroke.  A very straight stroke, in fact, since the "bow" sized dowel went through the bigger diameter dowel at right angles and couldn't be moved any way but straight.  I thought that was kind of ingenious. 

I will mention that while waiting for your violin, you could practice bowing with a yardstick or any other convenient similar shaped object.  Even with adult students, some teachers start them with a "shoulder bowing" exercise where you take something like a paper towel tube and rest the bow in it and hold the tube on your shoulder so you can practice the bowing movement by itself before you do it with the distraction of strings and notes and etc.

However, your cardboard violin would work even better for that, I think, and it looks like you and your daughter have already figured out that exercise.