Making: Building a Princess Castle for a Dress-Up Party!

When one of my daughters decided that she wanted to have a dress-up party for her birthday, I thought it might be a fun idea to build her a cardboard castle (I anticipated a lot of princesses).

I didn't have any spare boxes, but I know from experience that Home Depot sells 24"x18"x18" moving boxes for about $1.50 each, so I made a quick stop, bought 8 boxes and some duct tape, and returned home.

After a quick brainstorming session, I decided that it might be fun to have some "secret tunnels" into the castle, so I built two castle towers with crawlspaces on the bottom (an upright box on top of a sideways box), and one castle tower without a crawlspace (an upright box on top of an upright box).

Tower with Secret Entrance!

Building the basic towers was very easy.  No cutting required.  Just unfold the boxes, overlap a few flaps, and add some duct tape.  Once the towers were built, I decided to fancy them up with a little paint.  I bought 2 sponges at the dollar store, and 2 big containers of poster paint from the art store (1 black, 1 white).  I started with a very thin base coat of black paint.  To do this, I simply squirted a bit of black paint on the cardboard, and then smeared it around with a sponge. Super quick, super easy.

Maybe red duct tape wasnt' the best choice?

After that, I mixed some black and white paint together, and my daughter and I  used the sponges to smear paint all over the towers in stone-shaped patterns.  This was also surprisingly fast, and since I had a 4-year-old helping me, I decided not to worry too much about the shape/size/direction of the "stones".  I also took some scissors to the top of the towers and a box cutter to the tower windows to make it more castle-y looking.

After the towers were done (3 towers = 6 boxes), I sliced the last 2 boxes open into long panels, and then painted them the same way that I painted the towers (except on both sides).

Secret passage is blocked with balloons

On one of the walls, I cut out a big doorway for the main entrance to the castle.  Just to make things extra cool, I painted the door brown, and then my daughter and I made some black paper chains to connect from the door to the wall.  Be aware that even though the chains look great, you shouldn't expect them to last more than about 5 minutes, once the kids start playing with the castle!

Not a functional draw bridge.

The walls and the towers were all pretty flimsy and prone to collapse at this point, but once everything was connected together with some duct tape, it was suprisingly sturdy.  Another cool thing about this castle is that it is able to grow/shrink/change shape to accomodate various spaces.  In my case, I ended up only using about half of the total castle wall length that I had available.  Rather than cut off excess wall, I simply folded the extra length against the connecting towers and taped it in place.

Once the castle was in place and stabilized, my daughter and I made a few bonus decorations.  First, I let her design her own banners, and she chose a blue and white design with a big raspberry in the middle.  She also decided to fly a pink cat flag from the highest tower.

Things were looking good, but we had a few minutes to kill before the party, so we hung a dollar store dragon shield from the tower wall, and piled some balloons along the inner castle wall to throw at attacking forces.

That's it!  The castle was completed just in time, and the kids had tons of fun playing with it.  Other than the chains on the drawbridge, everything survived in great shape.

Who is hiding in the tower? A cheeseburger pinata!

Total Time: ~ 3 hours (not counting paint drying time).

Total Cost: $30

Total Difficulty: Low