Fantasy Cardboard Tower

Save your trash for Junk Architecture!  With a bit of imagination, kids can transform a pile of cereal boxes, egg cartons and cardboard tubes into a castle, a space station or a fantasy tower.  The handmade structure makes a great play station for action figures and dolls.

Paint, foil and stickers decorate this colorful fantasy tower!

Begin by gathering a variety of clean cardboard boxes and tubes.  Juice cartons, pudding boxes, egg cartons, tubes from giftwrap or paper towels al make great building blocks.  Lok for a sturdy sheet of flat cardboard for the base of the tower.

A hot glue gun is the fastest way to assemble the boxes.  There are child-safe models available. We recommend that an adult always works with the young artist, operating the glue gun under their direction. The hot glue gun alows construction to proceed at a rapid pace, as the warm stcky glue sets solid in just a few moments after aplication.  The boxes can also be put together with white glue.  This wil require more patience, as it takes 5 to 10 minutes for white glue to dry.  Again, an adult helper is very handy!

Kids may wish to cut the boxes with scissors, creating doors and windows, trimming pieces to fit.

A coat of paint unifies the structure, covering the various box labels and cardboard surfaces.  This is a fun process, best done outdoors on a sheet of newspaper, using acrylic paint or temera (poster) paint and a 1″ to 2″ wide paintbrush. The Tower pictured above was painted white, then once this initial coat of paint was dry, bring red, green, blue and yellow were added to some surfaces.  Gold stars and colored dot stickers, and some feltpen squiggles, completed the decoration.

Materials: cardboard boxes and tubes, glue (either a hot glue gun used by an adult, or white glue with an adult helper to support boxes as they dry), scissors, assorted colors of acrylic or tempera paint, paintbrush, various stickers.

Time: 1-3 hours

KidsArt Resource: Tempera paint is the most popular medium for art education, and for many reasons. It’s inexpensive, safe for all ages, cleans up easily with water, is fun to use, and lots more.