Last year, my kids had this great idea of creating a cardboard Disneyland Castle leprechaun (Sleeping Beauty’s castle). I love a good challenge so I started collecting paper towel rolls and empty boxes that would work. I came across some challenges but all in all the castle came out so well!! Originally, I was not planning on sharing this as a post so I didn’t do a great job of capturing the steps. Hopefully with pictures and my tips below you can follow along to create your own.
Supplies
Here is what I used to create our cardboard Disneyland Castle leprechaun trap:
- 4 paper towel rolls
- Large Shoebox shaped packing box (any larger shoebox shaped box will do)
- Small square shaped packing box
- 2 Pop Tart/fruit snack boxes (or similar!)
- Paint- gray and pink
- Cardstock/construction paper: pink, gray and blue
- Scissors
- Hot Glue
- wooden skewer for flag (printable link below)
- Spackling (optional!) I used this to add texture but that isn’t necessary
- Silver glitter paper (also optional) for front gate
How to put Together Your Cardboard Disneyland Castle
First, you will want to determine if you want to keep the back of the castle open for play/decoration. I kept the back of ours open to allow the kids to play with it much like a dollhouse. That being said, after over six months of play it did tear and get thrown out. My only regret is not taking better pictures of the castle (including the back!).
Second, prepare your boxes by painting them and allowing to dry. The larger box and medium-sized box were painted gray and the others were painted pink. I also painted two of the paper rolls gray and the rest pink. I used a picture of Sleeping Beauty’s castle and cut our the shapes as closely as I could. For more detailed trim I cut out a pieces of cardstock and glued them on. The blue cone shaped tops were made out of blue construction paper. I used a Cricut cutting machine to make the drop gate out of sliver glitter paper from the craft store. If you do not have a Cricut, print out the gate on the back of your paper and cut it out. Glue the gate on the inside of the arch.
Finally, print these cute flags to trick the leprechaun into the “trap”, cut and attach to skewer.
Let me know if you making this craft! I’d love to see!
With love,
Shahla
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