Fairy Castle Diorama

This Instructable is on how to make a tiny fairy castle diorama out of paper and foam. It was fun and fairly simple to make and I think the result turned out great!

Supplies:

• Foam
• Paper
• Acrylic paint

Tools:

• Paint brushes
• Scissors
• Hot glue gun
• Superglue

First cut out a circle in foam (or a square, whatever shape you want). This will be the base. For the three towers, cut three rectangular shapes out of the foam. Then, using scissors, cut the corners off to make a rough cylinder shape. You could make it more straight and neat, but I wanted to make it look as if the towers grew right out of the stone. Make three towers, each a different size. Then glue the towers onto the base, placing the tallest in the back.

For the tower roofs, roll paper into a cone. Next glue the cones onto the towers. At this point, I added a little rectangular piece of foam in between the front two towers to be a wall/bridge. For the detailing on the roofs, Cut tiny rectangles of paper. Using superglue or regular school glue, attach the slips of paper to the cones, starting from the bottom and layering up to the point. Using a pencil, pen, etc., press gently into the foam of the wall/bridge thingamajig, drawing bricks into the surface. You could also do this to the towers, but again, I wanted to make it look as if it grew out of the stone.

Using acrylic paint, first paint the whole diorama black. This will give the stony effect when all the other colors are over top of this layer. When the black is completely dry, drybrush brown over the base. Then do the same to the towers in grey. Paint the tower points dark green. This is the second layer. For the third layer, using the dry-brushing technique, add a little brown to the towers and a lighter green on the roofs. The fourth layer is the greens. Splotch some green on the base to look like grass or moss. For the moss on the towers, dab some green into any crevasses or holes, and in-between the bricks on the bridge. On the roofs I added some metallic green and copper colors. When these parts are dry, go over all the mossy areas with a lighter yellow green.