Rapunzel: Cardboard

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful young maiden who lived in a tall tower

and she was very, very sad and lonely.
So she sang to keep herself sane.

One day, a handsome prince chanced to walk
by her tower and he heard her sing.
Having read all the right storybooks as a child,
he knew exactly how to get to where she was.
Unfortunately, because he was never very good
at gym (although he was a whiz at Science),
he couldn't rescue her.

Which disappointed the lovely maiden somewhat.
But, because he was so handsome, and their circumstance
so reminescent of another story of ill-fated
Shakespearean lovers she'd read and loved as a child,
she walked down the staircase
and let him in by the front door.

And they lived happily ever after.

The end.



I love cardboard. I love it so much more than fabric.
When I need a break from sewing, I make cardboard
things. Whereas I never sew stuff when I need a
break from cardboard (which is never).
My favorite part of any kids' party is the cardboard.
Never mind the cake or the fabric nonsense or
felt food or Hello Kitties or whatever,
the cardboard is the real thing.
There is no party without the cardboard.

But making with cardboard under a time limit
with little kids at parties can get challenging,
so I often let them just do the decorating and
personalizing of cardboard toys.
Which suits me fine, because then I get to do
all the making beforehand.


This is a little cardboard tower to house a little Rapunzel
(or Juliet) peg doll. Already my three girls have hijacked
some of the towers and the Rapunzels and fought
over the lone Prince guy and made up their own stories.
So I thought I'd take some pictures and share
them here so you can make them too.
Hint: make enough for each of your kids to have one,
because they will not want to share.

You'll need typical cardboard-crafting supplies and equipment:

• Corrugated cardboard
• Strong scissors (I use kitchen scissors)
• Craft /X-acto knife
• Glue gun
• Marker/pen/pencil and ruler
• One peg doll

The Tower

Step 1
Cut a circle out of cardboard (we used corrugated cardboard). Our circle was made by tracing around a random coaster.

Measure the circumference of the circle. Cut out a rectangle of cardboard whose width is the circle's circumference plus one inch for overlap.

The height of the rectangle is whatever height you want the tower to be. Important: the ridges/spines of the cardboard should run parallel to the height of the tower, so that when you curve the rectangle to form the cylinder for the tower, it curves easily. One of the upcoming photos illustrates this further.
Step 2
Cut out the crenellations/battlements on the top edge of the rectangle:


Step 3
On the WRONG side of the cardboard, position the peg doll at the height you want it to be. Draw a window at face level. Also draw a horizontal line for the position of the floor the doll will stand on.


Step 4
Cut out the window.

Step 5
Curve the rectangle into a cylinder. Notice the ridges/spines of the corrugated cardboard (if you cut your rectangle in the correct orientation) running parallel to the height of the tower.

Step 6
Heat up your glue gun. You're going to be applying a thick line of glue all along that floor line you drew in Step 4, and rolling the wall onto the circular floor. Begin at one side of the wall, apply about 2-3" of glue along the floor line and press the edge of the circle onto it.
As the glue dries, continue applying more glue along the floor line and rolling the circle onto it. Roll the wall tightly around the edge of the circle so it makes good contact with the glue.


Step 7
When you get to the other end, apply glue along the overlap bit, and press firmly to seal the seam.

The floor should be firmly stuck in place like a high platform within the tower.

Here's the finished tower. Easy!

Rapunzel

Step 1
Cut a long piece of yarn or trim for her braid. Stick it on the top of the head with craft glue. Also cut out a piece of fleece (or felt) for her hair. Mine was roughly a broad leaf shape, and I cut small slits in the sides to wrap around the round head more snugly.


Step 2
Glue the toupee hair on her head.
This is all I'm doing for the peg dolls for the party. The kids will decorate their own Rapunzels with adhesive felt (buy these in sheets at craft stores) and self-adhesive gems and other felt stickons.


If the kids were older, I'd let them handle craft glue and make the entire doll, including the hair. And let them paint the dolls with acrylic paint. But these are 4-year-olds, and I think they'll manage better without the mess. So just stickers for them.

But for the sake of this tutorial, let's finish the doll, shall we?


Step 3
Stick adhesive felt around her body.

Step 4
Paint/draw on her face. We are going to use fine-tip permanent markers at the party. They bleed a little, but I don't think 4-year-olds are going to kick up a fuss about that.

Step 5
Embellish. Use trims, jewels, markers, whatever you like. We're sticking to only what's self-adhesive.

Step 6
Put Rapunzel in her tower, yell at her to Let Her Hair Down, and let the kids take it away.
Note: We're not providing Princes at the party. Emily wanted a Prince for her own story, so we made one - you can see him starring in the story at the beginning of this post. If you don't have peg dolls, use Playmobil. Or Legopeople. Or make your own small persons. Enjoy!

Next up: Our Rapunzel fishing game with daft caricatures!

Rapunzel: Dresses & Tresses

We interrupt the sewing of Halloween costumes
to show you er... more costumes.

Jenna's birthday party on Saturday will be a sort of
dress-up party. Or - to be more precise - it will be
the result of fleece and crushed panne
being on sale at Joann's.

Rapunzel dresses

that are incredibly easy to make.
And very soft and comfortable.

I made my first one last year, using
Rowena's magistrate's dress tutorial.

You need about 2 yards of crushed panne
(or some other drapey fabric),folded in half
so the fold becomes the shoulder seam line.

Then you cut this shape out:
Then you add a keyhole-shaped facing in fleece

and face-hem the sleeves.




I tried doing a ribbing sort of neckline at first, and it
was so hideous and Tshirtish that I yanked it off
and did the fleece neckline facings, sewn on the
wrong side of the dress and turned out to the
right side, zig-zag-stitching the edge down.


Then you sew a sash that looks like my camera strap,
and cinch the waist, cross behind and tie in front.
Instant embellishment without trim.


Then you make more dresses, because the panne was
$2.50 a yard and you could get two size 4T
dresses side-by-side out of each 2-yard-cut
(that's $2.50 a dress!)



and size them up and down to fit different kids
and sew more coordinating sashes
and you don't even need to finish the hems
(although I must remember to trim them to
the right length before the party).


Then there is the Hair:

4 yards of fleece for 8 wigs - working out to $2 a wig.
Cut six panels - two short and four long,
sew them into a cap
braid them down the back
(I left ours loose so they would fit most of the heads)
snip bangs in front (if I had more time, I would have
added another fringy cap on top of this one so it
looks more tousled-hair-like and less turban-like)
and let them go tell their own stories.



So $4.50 an outfit, plus scraps.

Not a bad deal for a party takeaway, and maybe
someone will wear theirs on Halloween, too!

Rapunzel

Jenna is turning four! She's having a Rapunzel birthday party.

The third quarter of the year is always manic. Barely six weeks after Emily's birthday is Jenna's. Which is the day before Halloween. All involve some kind of deadline-heavy sewing, especially Halloween. When the girls were younger, it was a bit saner because there were fewer actual parties and fewer actual walking children going trick-or-treating needing insulated costumes. By comparison, sewing for Christmas is a piece of cake - relaxing and lovely and slow. So these couple of weeks have been fuller and busier than ever!

But back to Rapunzel. Having done parties for Emily for three years now, it is a lot of fun to have Jenna take her turn. She is so thrilled about everything, and it is a treat for me to work with her to plan her party. She got to hand-deliver her invitations to two school friends, and she kept peeking in our mailbox to check if the mailman had come to collect the invitations that needed to go by post. She counts down the days to her birthday each day, and she's already lined up birthday themes and guest lists for the next 11 years of her life.

Emily's tea party was dainty and sprinkles and color and sunshine and girlyness , which is just like Emily. Jenna's will be funny and dramatic and Heroines Who Save The Day and wigs and fantastical adventures. Apart from tiaras that Jenna specially requested, we are trying to depart from the princess theme, because the real Rapunzel was the daughter of commoners, victim of her mother's food cravings. She was named after the very vegetable -rampion - her mother craved, and I've always loved the version of her story in which her father gallantly (if desperately) snuck into the witch's garden to steal the prized vegetable to save his wife from pining to death.

I could never be sure if Rapunzel's mother was already pregnant when she craved Other People's Lettuces (some versions say yes) but I say Hurrah for the husband! Hurrah for men everywhere who drive miles in the middle of the night to buy their pregnant - and belligerent - wives the strangest food! In my case, it would have meant my longsuffering husband taking a plane halfway across the world to bring me delicacies from Singapore, preferably cooked by Mum, in tiffin carriers that would have set off all the metal detectors at the airport. And then I'd also have felt obliged to name my daughters Mee Rebus, Ayam Buah Keluak, and Koo Kee Yong Tau Fu*. Mercifully, he didn't.

We liked Rapunzel's story so much that we're going to read it to Jenna's guests at her party - just so they know she isn't Barbie, and there were no dragons or magic paintbrushes (yes, we've watched that movie, too) in her story. A nice, slow, intellectual, quiet start.

And then everyone gets to wear wigs and fancy maiden dresses.

And make Rapunzel + Prince Whatzisname peg dolls and cardboard towers.

And - we'll be indoors - so there'll be a Tug-Apart Pinata, not a Smash-Up one.

And daft games, in which we pin Rapunzel in her miserable tower - although one could just as easily imprison the witch, the horse, or the head of lettuce, if one misses the mark.

And eat rampion treats (OK, maybe just cookies) and drink from goblets and say (or variations thereof) "prithee, whither be the privies?"

And do competitive fishing to see which fair maiden in her tower can nab the most princes on the ends of their plaits (whoever reels in the witch gets a penalty - ha!)

I'm hoping there will be lots of laughing and jumping and cheering and general undaintyness. Jenna, who's in it for the beautiful long yellow hair, has absolutely no idea that her mother has gone absolutely bonkers with this theme! Can she pull it off? Tune it next time to find out!

I leave you with this hilarious classic Sesame Street video that our kids love. Kate regularly acts this out at playgrounds that have upper and lower climbing levels, playing both Rapunzel and the Prince - it is a hoot!

* No, not Nutella. This was pregnancy, people! Not just any old sewing-emergency.

Belle

Kate is Belle for Halloween this year.

Very over-the-top, all that ruching. I now know why people use elastic instead of a gathering thread - see how that front row has already snapped and sagged. Or maybe this only happens with children, who tend to roll around on the ground in their new dresses to see how puffy everything feels.

So I pulled out all the threads, and replaced them with elastic.

Coarse, and not as elegant, but resilient. And with children, resilient trumps elegant.

Here's the back - all I will say is that it was fun inserting an invisible zipper in the midst of all the ruching.

If you're wondering why there's so much fleece in this gown (it's fleece underneath all that satin), it's because we live in Minnesota. Halloween costume sewing is easy, but it does get challenging to have it be warm as well. So anywhere we can add an extra layer of fleece, or a couple of puffy air pockets, we will. Like this sleeve- ruched to be in sync with that crazy skirt:

Even with all this fleece, and an inner turtleneck shirt and jeans/fleece pants and mittens, we might still need a fleece-lined satin cape to wear on the day itself. Which I should probably make. More fabric shopping. Whee.

One down, two to go!

When I Don't Feel Like Baking

I let the kids do it.

I realize that many of my cardboard crafts here on this blog are somewhat involved and 3-D, which makes them funner than usual for the girls, but they are sometimes more of a time commitment than we'd like.

For lazy days, we have our Flat Cardboard Crafts, the sort that don't require the glue gun, or the smelly-fumed craft adhesive. And as the main point of such Flat Projects is decorating, even Kate can do it without me having to watch her too much.

Yesterday we made cardboard cookies. So easy it's ridiculous.


First we cut out cardboard circles from an old amazon.com box (but you can use any box!)
Then we decorated them with various craft supplies - buttons and self-adhesive foam sheets cut into frosting shapes, circles and sprinkles. And markers. And a little bottle of white puffy paint for extra frosting.

And the kids made their cookies -

and today the puffy paint frosting is all dry, so they can play bakery (and I can work on halloween costumes).