Steampunk Cardboard Dragon

I’m a big fan of the industrial era and steampunk. I spend ‘way too much time’ on Pinterest getting ideas and while I work mostly with paper mache` I thought I would take a crack at cardboard. The only thing I spent money on during this project was the 3 cans of matt black spray paint. So you too can take a look in that craft box of yours or scout around the house for all types of items to use for this project. Here’s my dragon who made his lair in my entry way. Working with cardboard and building layers upon layers gives projects great illusionary 3D appearances. With this cardboard project let's have fun, be creative....and let's get started!

• CARDBOARD! - shipping box/pizza box/ cracker box...etc
• cutting tools – exacto knife/scissors
• glue – any PVA glue (school glue)/mod podge/hot glue/E6000
• paint – black spray paint/ acrylic colors/clear coat spray paint
• frame – can be made out of multiple cardboard sheets gluded together/ a thin sheet of plywood/ I used art canvas
• 4 box corner protectors (optional) see step 6

The Fun Stuff:

• craft foam sheet/ craft plastic canvas sheet/ foam shapes
• black plastic split cable tube
• self stick sheet of crystals/rhinestones to make rivets plus a flat sided marble for dragons eye
• hole punch to make flat rivets and screw heads
• hardware - metal cogs/wing nuts/washers/curtain rod hooks/radio and/or computer electronic parts
• stick pins to hold pieces in place while working (optional)

A) Material: Your frame can be of any material or size you choose. Here are some suggestions:

• art canvas – I made my frame on top of a 30” x 40” prestreched canvas that I had sitting around in my art room
• thin plywood – keep it thin….you don’t want your project to be too heavy as you may be hanging it later so keep this in mind. Note: It will be completely covered with other materials and paint so quality doesn’t really matter as long as it’s flat.
• Cardboard – you can always takes a couple sheets of cardboard and glue them together to get a great foundation to build on.

B) Construction: You can get tons of ideas for your frame shape by Googling ‘cardboard frames’. Pick one you like and mimic it. Here’s the one I liked the best:

• Measure...measure...measure...uhg! I won’t be giving measurements here but you can lay your cardboard pieces on your frame base and cut the excess off and go from there.

• I used what cardboard I had on hand and cut out multiple flat pieces and thin strips with an exacto knife.

• To get the wavy corrugated look from those flat pieces, you would remove one layer of cardboard (doesn’t matter from which side). Note that this doesn’t peel away looking ‘pretty’. See the sample here where I took tweezers and removed the ‘cling-ons’ and then lightly sanded the cardboard with an emery board.

C) Arrangment: Arrange and glue your cardboard pieces down (use whatever glue you are comfortable working with) and stand back and admire your handiwork….looks great – right!

Note: did you have slightly uneven seams where you connected two pieces of cardboard together? Yah, I did too. Once you paint them black they aren’t that noticeable.

• Find a simple dragon picture and hand draw your dragon onto your foundation.
  • I used a ruler to draw the different angles for the metal plates for the background
  • the clear space left over in the middle dictated the size of my dragon.
• Find the right proportion for you... whether your dragon takes up all the background or a portion of it, It’s totally up to you. Remember your free to shape your dragon any way you like to fill the space.

• Work from the background to the front and leave the dragon for last. I wanted metal plates for my background and I accomplished this by using 3 pieces of cardboard for each plate. If you zoom in on the picture you will be able to see two layers were from heaver box cardboard topped with a thinner layer from a cereal box.
• Cutting the wings – I actually used newspaper (as not to waist time/material re-cutting cardboard to get it right) to cut out different sizes and played and resize it until it fit the dragon. Once I was happy with how it looked I used the newspaper as a template to cut out the actual cardboard wings. I then numbered each piece and clamped them together for easy movement around the project until I decide how I want to place them on the body.
• Keeping the steampunk theme in mind, you’ll see gears (some store bought and some made from foam), mesh plates made from plastic canvas sheets and layer, layer, layer!
• All steampunk projects involve rivets and screws. For rivets I use rhinestones. They are dimensional and self sticking so they can be placed in the corners of each ‘metal plate’. For screw heads you would take a foam sheet and your hole punch and wa-la!...you have screw heads...well sorta...take an exacto knife and make a slit across each foam piece making sure not to cut all the way through. Now you have screw heads.

Here’s where your imagination comes in. He’s your dragon...do your own thing and go crazy!

Here’s what I did:

A) the basics:

• the body was strips of cardboard glued down according to my drawing underneath. I got my cardboard to curve by removing one side as we did in step 2 for our frame. This portion of his body is going to be covered so it doesn’t need to look pretty just accurately and proportional (note how the body slopes down and gets narrower at the tail).
• I placed strips of newspaper over the dragons body and painted it with mod podge to stabilized the body and keep the paper in place. You may used watered down school glue if you don’t have mod podge. Let it dry until it’s hard.
• Cut out two sides of the head placing one on each side of a square cardboard block to give it that 3 dimensional look. You can build on this head with other dimensional shapes made from your foam. It’s totally up to you.
• The yellow and pink you see on this picture will be your foam sheets used to make scales, tongue, cogs and accent on the wings. Note: I didn’t like the dragons tail (it looked ‘flat’) so I opted for cardboard as seen in the next picture. I did this by cutting triangles of different sizes and glue them to the tail portion.
• Scales on the body of the dragon is just more thin cardboard, scales on head is foam which wrapped around his head nicely.

B) the embellishments:

• Dig into your craft box and find items to finish up the details.
• I used parts from a computer keyboard, diodes and capacitors, old radio parts etc.
• keeping with the steampunk theme, I used black wire cable down the dragons spine. I ran it through curtain rod rings (the kind you pinch to hold the fabric) that had been glued to his back. I added a gem stone to the top of each ring as a rivet.

Note: If you look closely at the dragon wings, I used the hole punch and foam to make the rivets - supposedly holding the metal together.

• A trip to the backyard (use a well ventilated area when using paint sprays) and 3 cans of black matt spray paint later (remember he’s big ...30x40”) I had a primed dragon ready for his make-up!
• I left the frame black and dried brushed silver and gold over the rest hoping for a metal effect. You can use any color combination that you fancy. Silver and gold was my first thoughts for this metal effect.
• Once I added his glass eye I wasn’t satisfied with the silver/gold coverage so I decided to add selected areas of patina (metal that has rusted) using acrylic turquoise and copper watered down letting it drip here and there then added some additional dry brushing of copper. And there he be!

• Give your piece a final coat of clear spray to seal in your colors. I used matt but feel free to use a clear satin for a slight sheen.
• I used a small computer fan with a wire running from the dragons eye to his jaw to mimic a mechanical build and note the hot glue dripping from the mouth gives our dragon some character and realism.
• Add corner protectors for looks (see photo bottom left) and your Hardware for hanging and he’s ready for show.

Hope you had fun and enjoyed a peek into my world of art.....creation is 'Endless'!