Cinderella's Castle: Princess Party Table Centerpiece

For our daughter's birthday I always like to make a few decorations based on her current obsession. Last year it was Winnie the Pooh (we love Pooh around here!) and this year it is Cinderella. She has never seen the Disney movie but she has seen the song segments and she loves how Cinderella dances with Prince Charming and then loses her slipper as she runs away.

I wanted to make a centerpiece for the table and Cinderella is definitely rich in imagery to choose from... the castle, the glass slippers, the clock, the pumpkin, magic, the mice, etc. In the end I opted for the castle. I figured I could make the castle itself out of poster board and make two supports out of foam board to stand it up.

For this project you will need:

• 2 sheets of poster board
• 1 sheet of foam board
• Scissors and/or X-acto knife + cutting board
• Ruler
• Watercolor paper and glue
• Acrylic craft paint (optional)
• Glitter acrylic craft paint (optional) - I used these from Martha Stewart

I started out by drawing a bunch of horizontal and vertical lines on one of the poster board sheets. These lines served as guidelines for me when drawing the castle.

As a reference image for the castle I used this castle silhouette. Then I started drawing the image onto the poster board using the guidelines to make everything straight and properly lined up. This is a free hand drawing but the castle could be transferred to the poster board using other methods, such as tracing with tracing paper.

When the drawing was complete, I cut out the castle using an X-acto knife (scissors could also be used). I then used this cut out castle to make a second castle on the other sheet of poster board. I wanted to make the castle a bit more sturdy so I opted for two layers of poster board.

The towers are relatively thin and when I stood the castle up, they started to droop. So I cut a few strips of watercolor paper (because it is thick without being too thick) and glued them from the tops of the towers down to the body of the castle.

Then I glued the two poster board castles together.

Using the shorter castle towers as a stencil, I drew the supports onto a piece of foam board and then cut them out using an X-acto knife. I definitely recommend the X-acto knife for this step because scissors would squeeze the foam board and cause the edges to have an uneven thickness.

I mounted the supports to the castle and here it is! At this point you can either paint it, decorate it, or declare it done! I was really really tempted to leave it white, but I had an image of a blue castle in my mind so I grabbed my paints and continued on.

I used acrylic craft paint and a foam brush to paint both sides of the castle and both sides of the two foam board supports. Remember to paint the edges of the foam board supports! I wanted an ombre effect so I started at the bottom with a light blue and kept adding a little white to the blue paint for every new row.

I wanted the castle to sparkle so after the acrylic paint dried I added some glitter paint. I used two colors: blue and silver. In hindsight, I thought they were too contrasting with the ombre blue when not in the light. If I were to do this again I would use only one color and that would probably be a white glitter paint.

I painted two or three layers of the glitter paint to have a good amount of glitter on the castle.

And here is the final result!