Christmas Tree Princess Castle - DIY 3D Puzzle

Hello. In this instructable I’m going to show you how we made a Princess Castle as a Christmas Tree Decoration. We only used two standard insulation styrofoam sheets of 100x50x10 cm. Our Christmas Tree is about 1,5 meters high and sits in the corner of the room so my castle is also designed for a corner.

Download the free vectors. You can find the files on this step and at the end of my instructable. Make sure you understand the vectors before going into cutting. I made it very easy to understand, with colors, notes and everything. If you have any issues just comment and I’ll be happy to help you. You have a top view of the walls, a top view of the roof, a front view of the castle and, below, all the cutting vectors you’ll need. I used a different color for each element so you can see how they need to be cut or glued.

Start cutting. First cut the vectors from the left. They will give you the raw blocks that you will later cut using the vectors on the right. Check the colors and dimensions twice before each cut.

Ok, the hard part is done. Now you need to glue everything together. Use hot glue for this part. make sure the glue is not too hot and melts the styrofoam. Use a leftover piece to check that it’s ok. Check the vectors constantly so you don’t glue the wrong pieces. Whenever you have to glue a window push it gently to the inside about half a centimeter and glue it on the back. Don’t glue the towers on the roof just yet.

Now that everything is in place notice that we don’t have any roofs. Use thin sheets of xps or cardboard for the straight roofs of the castle. For the cylinder towers we’ll make some paper cones. Make different types of cones and don’t worry if they are not the same size or angle, they will look amazing. Place them on the cylinders and make sure they are straight. Mark them where they need to be cut by holding the marker still and rotating the tower. After cutting the base straight glue the cone to the tower checking again to be straight.

Paint the castle in the desired colors. We used princess colors and glitter for our castle but you can use any colors you like. For the glitter part you will need a spray bottle, water, wood glue (the one that becomes transparent when dry), a tea strainer and of course glitter (use translucent glitter if possible). Mix water with wood glue in a 8:1 ratio and put the mixture in the spray bottle. You will spray the surface and using the strainer you will sift the glitter on the wet surface.

After you decorated your Christmas Tree, carefully place the castle at the base and start arranging the towers on the roof. You can secure them in place using dressmaking pins. You can get a nice effect by playing with lights inside the castle. Please vote for my instructable in the Pattern Contest and Three Ingredient Challenge. Thank you