Castle Smethansmee

As promised, I hereby present the project I've been working on for the past few weeks. It's a two and a half foot castle made using paper mache.

I have named it after myself, egotist that I am. Behold, Castle Smethansmee :

I started with a big cardboard box and some egg boxes. I cut up the egg boxes to make crenellations (AKA knobbly bits) and taped them around the top of my castle.

Next I made turrets from rolls of newspaper, and the roofs from cones of newspaper.

I paper mache'd the whole thing with kitchen paper - mainly because I wanted the castle to have a stoney texture to it; newspaper is a bit smooth.

Then I painted it grey. I mixed the black and white paints on the walls of the castle because I didn't want it to have a flat colour.

Next I made the door. I cut door shapes from card and drew an outline on them. Then I glued them in place on my castle.

I used this glue, which is supposed to dry with a shiney, protective finish that won't get gummy if it gets wet again. This would be useful as I intend to put the castle in the living room and it will most likely have cups of tea put on it every day.

I cut some squareish shapes out of various fabrics in my scrap box, and glued them down to look like bricks around my doorway. Next I drew the windows with a black felt tipped pen.

Time to lay the rest of the brickwork. I did the walls first, starting at the top and working my way down.

After that I did the top of the box, then the turrets.

When all the bricks were laid, I set to work fastening my box. I had left one side of the box openable because boxes are much more useful when you can get inside. I made three holes in one door by hammering a nail through, and I fixed a paper fastener into each hole.

I made three corresponding holes in the other door and threaded an elastic band through each. I secured the bands in place using a piece of folded card.

The elastic bands hook over the paper fasteners to secure the doors.

Finally, I had to finish the roofs for my turrets. Originally, I was going to cover them in bricks like the rest of the castle but frankly, I was sick of laying bricks.

Anyway, I looked on Google Images and concluded that they should look different from the rest of the castle. So I painted them purple to match the door, and I did them in varying shades by mixing blue and red paint directly on the surface I was painting.

After they had dried I noted two problems. One, I hadn't painted them very well (meaning not enough purple). Two, the colour was too dark. So I added white into the mix for a second coat.

Once dry, I glued the roofs to their turrets and painted them with a layer of the glue for a shiny finish.

And here is the finished product in its prided place. 

Picture Frames

James had a Big Cats 2013 calendar that he didn't want to throw away because it has some good pictures in it. I asked him to choose his favourite two so I could make frames for them and put up around our house :)

For the first one I wanted to do something simple. I cut out four strips of card and taped them together, measuring my frame around the picture.

Then I cut out paper in three shades of blueish colours. I wrapped the paper around the frame and taped it in place at the back.

I had planned to paint dots on my frame with puffy paint but at this point I decided against it because I thought it looked finished. I'll try out the puffy paint another time.

For the second frame I had a wave of inspiration from this broomstick, given to me a few Halloweens ago (thanks, Luke).

I cut up the broom to get all the twigs and made a frame base from card.

I covered the frame in PVA glue. And I put twigs all over it.

After it dried I checked the twig covering for gaps showing the card. I found some, and luckily I had quite few twigs left, so I filled in the gaps. I repeated this step a few times.

To encourage all the bits to stay in place, I splurged the whole thing in more glue.

Two days later I went back to my frame and peeled it off the plastic cloth I'd been working on. The corners of the card were still showing a little so I trimmed them down.

To finish the two frames, I bought some laminating sheets (in lieu of glass, which is oh so heavy). I didn't melt the sheets - I don't own one of those machines. I just trimmed the sheet down, taped it in place and taped the picture to the back. Then I stuck some string to the back of each frame to hang them up.