Chapter 4: Tiana's room

 The era of Tiana's story gave me an excuse to find decor from the Art Nouveau style.  The stained glass windows include a frog and a firefly to tie in the fun parts of the story.  All of the paper was from my existing stash.  The bed is made from a candy box, a boston baked beans box, to be exact..
I found a picture of the this amazing headboard and had to make a bed out of it.  The candy box was the base.  I printed images of the bed, including a reverse image of the footboard, so that the footboard could be two sided.  I very carefully cut the images out and pasted the reverse image on the back of the footboard, then pasted the headboard and footboard on the candy box.

Much to my annoyance, I discovered the doll I'd used to determine if the candybox mattress would be long enough, did not have a hairstyle as high as Tiana's  I had to use a different candy box.  I started with a much longer one and cut it down to size.  Lesson learned, use the doll you for whom you are building to measure appropriate bed sizes.  I have pictures of cutting a larger box down to size with the explanation of Cinderella's room.  When I remade, Tiana' s bed, I added feet, to raise the bed off the floor.  I also glues the bed to the floor.
Sadly, the beautiful swan neck details, that I had worked to obsessively to cut for the footboard, could not withstand the vigorous use of two little girls and their friends, so I cut off the ones that hadn't been torn off, to protect the footboard from being totally destroyed.  It has avoided further damage.  
 
 I printed reverse images of each of the stained glass windows and then placed them on the outside of the castle walls at the same positions.  The firefly window was framed out with painted crafts sticks.  The round windows posed a challenge.  I decided to use hot glue to frame them and then painted the glue.  It's "rustic" looking but no more so than the wooden window frames, so I'm calling it good.

Chapter 3: Shrek's Room, the Library and the Kitchen

I realize Shrek is not in the Disney pantheon but we have a Shrek doll that fits the scale.  The girls play with him and the princesses, so I felt he needed a space.  Given his personality, I felt his room would be most appropriately placed at a distance from the rest of the private spaces.  But since he's a sensitive guy, I put it next to the library, which, for no really good reason, is next to the kitchen.

These rooms are mostly finished, but there will likely be some updates to include a little more furniture, especially in the kitchen.  But the girls have been playing in them for a long time and I'm working on other rooms so they get their chapter now.  I'll add new pictures for any cool changes.

After using lots of masking tape to connect all of the shoe boxes, I painted the inside of all of them grey, because a) it seem very castle like and b) it was one of the paint colors I already had.

 Then I spent hours and hours (really) looking for the right images to create the feel I wanted for each room. My original plan was to create great backdrops and not a whole lot of furniture (it's still the plan, but I've started to really like making furniture).  I used Snag It, Picasa and Word (pasting images in docs to get the exact printed size I wanted) to get scale, direction and to change image styles--making real things look a little more like cartoons.
Then I started putting things together.  Glue sticks, white glue (stuff I had on hand) and lots of cutting and pasting happened.

Finding the images for the kitchen set of a bit of a making streak.  I remember pouring through my stacks of various papers trying to find the perfect floor when it finally occurred to me that I could just use an image for that, too.  Minutes later it was game on!

I was using white craft glue and clamps to add the wooden slats to the ceiling.  It took a few days.  The back wall, cooking stove, wine cellar, header beam and floors were all printed on photo paper and glued with stick glue to the walls and floors.  The steps and the little table actually came from the packaging from one the girl's princess toys.  With the floors, I ended up painting the seams of seams to get seamless look.  In hindsight, I could have just painted the floor but I was having a block.
The library was a little more difficult than expected.  I wanted something that looked really rustic and cartoonish to fit with the look of the dolls.  I finally found something and after bit of work with Snag It, I was able to create bookcases in the sizes I needed.  I did not want them all to be the same sized or even.  I don't know why, that was just how I envisioned it.

A stained glass window was important to my aesthetic and while the art nouveau styling might seem anachronistic, this is a magical, time and space bending castle, so it's all good.  

The girls wanted to participate in the project.  I had them gather sticks.  I had an idea for Shrek's space.  I'd found a cool picture of a "Hobbit" window, a stone fireplace and some "portraits" of Shrek and his loved ones and my favorite part--Shrek's outhouse.  The sticks would make a perfect addition to the rustic look I was going for with Shrek's room.  I used white glue to affix the stick.  It took a few days to finish because of the drying time.  I'd totally forgotten I had a hot glue gun.  I wouldn't forget that again.

I'm ridonkulously pleased with how the outhouse came out.  I'd cut through just one box to create the door and used the side of the other box to affix the picture of the toilet.  I even printed a reverse image of the door and cut it out so the interior would have the moon cutout in reverse.  The placement of the door frame was precarious.  I had to bend it at the hinge but I think it fit the whole look.

Chapter 2: The Ballroom

Naturally, a castle needs a ballroom, so that was a priority.  And in the grand scheme of rooms for this castle, this was seriously easy.
I used my paper trimmer to cut 1" squares from some origami paper, I had on hand.  I chose it because it was shiny and reminded me of the marble fancy ballroom floors in the real castles I've visited.
I didn't have enough of the paper I used for the back wall to do all the walls; nor did I have enough of the velum I used on the side walls, so I just used both.  I painted the entire inside of the box pink as base for everything.
I, also, happened to have some Disney princess stickers in my stash.  The group picture of the princess combined with the frame made me think of the gorgeous ceiling paintings in Versailles.
But I found myself dissatisfied with the way the paper edges looked where the walls.  I needed some sort of trim or molding, something to  give it a little extra sparkle to the room.  Because we live in an area that celebrates Mardi Gras, we just happened to have a shocking amount of Mardi Gras beads, many of which were already broken (I have two little girls who play rather roughly at times).  Voila--sparkly trim!

Still, I felt it was missing something.  There needed to be a source of music and lighting.  It was missing lighting.  With the ceiling mural a chandelier was not going to work.  Maybe sconces would work.  A visit to the local hobby shop and a rummage through the clearance part of the jewelry making department yielded two brooches that had the look and scale I felt the room needed.  I used wire cutters to snip off the pins.  Some gold hot glue and a few moments later, we had sconces.
I still needed musicians.  I found a perfect silhouette of a chamber quartet after a long search through Google images.  I printed it on heavy stock and with my very sharp scissor and an exacto knife, I cut it out, then glued it to the back.  I chose the smaller scale to give the suggestion that the room was much bigger than it and the musicians were not as close to the dancers.
After all that, lots of modge podge was brushed on everything, except the sconces.

Castle Project Chapter 1 or In the beginning, there were these build-a-bear boxes

So I had these cottage shaped Build-a-Bear boxes that were just aching to made into something cool, and a dozen or more Girl Scout Cookie case boxes and a hoard of empty shoe boxes to add to effort.  In my head, a castle was forming.  It was not a traditional, boxy, symmetrical type castle, but rather more a rambling, Hogswarts style castle that I had in mind.

 I didn't manage to take a shot of the "inspiration" box before I started painting it, but it looked like the one here.  The sides had icing/chalk drawings of doors, but they weren't functioning.  That is until I got out my box cutter.  I decided I would use on of the door styles as a base shape for a castle essential--the drawbridge and on the other box I would use the other style door as an actual door use the windows as is.  I, also, cut out the circle logos at the top of the box for sky lights.  With lots of masking tape, I smoothed out the parts that stuck out and covered the handle hole, to make a solid looking roof.  Then I cut out one side of one box opposite what would become the drawbridge.  and I cut two panels out of the other box to provide more access for play.  Then the interior wall decor began.

For the gatehouse (the box with the drawbridge), I cut 1/2" strips of a variety of wood colored paper I had in my ridiculous stash of scrapbook paper (I used to be a Creative Memories consultant) and with a watered down white glue, I began to paper the drawbridge and the interior of the gatehouse.  After "papering" the interior, I painted the boxes with some acrylic paint I had left over from a mural I did for our nursery before my first daughter was born.  

The keeping room or tack room (I still can't decide what to call it) also got it's interior set and exterior painted.  

While cutting up and taping the Build-a-Bear boxes, I also started cutting up and taping together some of the Girls Scout Cookie case boxes.  One was planned as the stable to go in between the two Build-a-Bear boxes and another case was going to go on top of the stable and become a ballroom.  On top of all of these, two cases were masking taped together to form the dining room and sitting room.  Then on top of that I was going to put the kitchen, a library and a room from the chief of security, Shrek.  

It was originally, once all put together, it was planned to look like this:

Things changed a little bit and the dining room and sitting room, as well as the kitchen, library and Shrek's room, were moved to another wing.  But this is how it started.  I had this primary building and some shoe boxes fashioned together with masking tape to form an additional wing, planned primarily for bedrooms.  

Boxes, masking tape, hot glue, scrapbook paper, acrylic paint and modge podge, all of which I already had on hand were the primary resources I used when the project started.

The Gatehouse, stable, and tack room were the first things I finished.  

For the stable, because I knew the box was going to support other boxes, I made a support column to ensure stability.  I, also had to build up the top of the ballroom box so that the dining room and sitting room boxes would sit across it and the rooftops of the gatehouse and tack room.  

The stable got a paint job before putting on the pretty paper and then go several coats of modge podge.  The stable was hot glued between the gatehouse and tack room.  The places where the walls joined up were taped for reinforcement and repainted.  

Eventually, I decided to line the opening between the gatehouse and stable with wooden craft sticks.  I, also, covered the glue joins on the outside of the castle with wooden craft sticks and painted them for nicer, less gluey look.  The opening between the stable and the tack room is still a little rough looking but I'm not trying to make it perfect--it's a stable in an "old" castle, it doesn't need to be flawless--or at least that's what I'm telling myself.  The girls haven't complained.

The finished stable and tack room look like this.

The drawbridge to the gatehouse had to be a working drawbridge, obviously.  How would I make that happen?  

I went out to the craft stores and searched in the jewelry making sections.  I found a necklace chain of heavy-ish weight and reasonably smooth links.  Since I cut the drawbridge right out of the side of box, instead of attaching something, the drawbridge was exactly the same size as the opening, so I couldn't simply pull the chains through the sides of the castle wall, the drawbridge wouldn't close proper, plus it would look odd.  So I made a header, to go across the arch of the opening, using popsicle sticks.  This did two useful things--provided a place through which to pull the drawbridge chains and provided a stronger structure that would handle more wear and tear.  

I carefully punched holes in the wooden pieces and placed tiny rivets, also from the craft store, in the holes to ensure the chains would glide smoothly through the holes.  To ensure strength, I actually used two sticks and glued them together.  I also punched holes, using a compass point, in the drawbridge, at the same spots, and put rivets in the holes as well.  Once the chain was in the drawbridge, I hammered the rivets to affix the chain to the bridge and then sealed it with hot glue.  

I left a fair amount of slack in the chains, since little children would be playing with it.  The ends of the chain were affixed to small nobs which were glued to the interior walls of the gatehouse.  You wrap the chains around the nobs to keep the drawbridge up and unwind to let the drawbridge down--not very sophisticated but it works and is easy for the kiddos to use.

Decorative buttons were used to cover the holes and glue on the exterior of the drawbridge and were added to the header beam and eventually to several of the windows that I trimmed out with wood pieces, for both aesthetics and durability.  The interior of the gatehouse looked like this, at this point in the project.  

After I began work on the project, it started to grow in scope, insanely really.  And there were some changes made to the plans.  As I mentioned the dining room, sitting room and the rooms above those, were moved to another wing.  An atrium/greenhouse, requested by my daughters who were inspired by an episode of "Sofia the first," was added.  The how's on that are for another post, but this is how the "mostly" finished wing ended up looking.

The girls play with the rooms as soon as they are even a little finished.  It became apparent that having to reach through the stable to get to the drawbridge controls was a serious hassle.  So, even though I had trimmed out the windows and thought I was mostly finished, I decided to cut out the exterior wall.  So it the gatehouse looks like this.  Easier to play.  

There are five more wings to the the castle and dozens of rooms.  It now takes up the entire dining room table.  I'll create posts for the rooms, in varying detail.  This is a long story, and the project is still in progress.  Stay tuned.