We love to go all out for our kids birthday parties! This year we made a grand entrance out of cardboard boxes. My daughter had a Princess birthday party so she had a pink castle. My son had a Lincoln Log party so he had a Lincoln Log Fort! They were made almost exactly the same way with a few differences and of course different paint colors and decorations.

Each one took about 8 cardboard boxes from Home Depot. The towers on each side had 2 boxes stacked on top of each other. The trick is to not fold the top and bottom of the boxes down so that they have extra height. Next to each tower was one box and a space between them. Then we cut a box to make it flat and attached it to the top of the front of boxes to create a doorway. This is the base for how we created both of the forts.

For my sons, we used a cut piece of cardboard to create a roof over each tower. We also left the doorway square by folding the flaps of the cut cardboard box together to create a “roof” over the doorway entrance. You can see all of this below in the picture of the fort before it was finished.

Once everything was put together it was time to paint! We used a light brown wall paint to cover the cardboard and then used a thin brush to paint lines on it to look like wood planks. We painted the roof tops green and created windows out of green paper that we got glued on to it. I also made a sign out of scrap wood and used my Cricut to cut out the words. You can see the finished project here!

For my daughters castle, the base was the same. Instead of making roofs for the towers we left it open on top and cut rectangles out of the cardboard to give it a castle top. We also cut an arch out of the flat cardboard covering the top of the doorway instead of folding it in. You can see all of this pictured below.

What isn’t pictured is that we also cut out arched windows in the castle. This turned out super cute but was a huge pain for decorating because then you could see the brown interior of the boxes.

Once the base was build it was time to decorate! We spray painted the entire thing hot pink ( I do not recommend spray paint because it took way too many cans!). Once the entire castle was hot pink I used a link pink spray paint and a large sponge to stamp the stones. I used a small sponge to stamp all of the borders around the windows and doors.

Once it was dry I cut fabric and hot glued it inside the windows to create little curtains and attached fake flower vines to the front. You can see how it turned out below!

We had fun making these projects but they were a ton of work!! It was well worth it to see how excited all of the kids were to walk through the entrance and take pictures with it.

Which one is your favorite?!

If you decide to make one of these yourself be sure to plan ahead on how you will anchor it from falling over. Cardboard is very lightweight and these easily blow over from a small amount of wind. We used collapsed soccer chairs inside of the towers and that worked well for us!

Hope you enjoyed seeing our project! Be sure to check out my other posts with full details from each party.