Every child dreams of their own fortress, a private place where they can play and hide from adults. To do this, you do not need to buy expensive children's playhouses, because making such a house is easy and cheap with cardboard, scissors and glue. How to make a house out of cardboard and how to decorate it? We have collected do-it-yourself cardboard house schemes, and also picked up interesting ideas for a dollhouse.
How to make a big cardboard house
It should be understood that for such a large cardboard house you will need a box not from shoes, but larger - like from a washing machine or other large household appliances. It is very simple to make the basis of the house, but it is worth entrusting this activity to an adult or an older child. But you can decorate it with your baby. How to make a cardboard house?
We'll need
- big box
- Scissors
- Stationery knife
- Scotch
- Glue moment or glue gun
- Pencil
- Ruler
Also, the house can be made much more spacious by gluing several boxes together and cutting a wall between them. But you need to evaluate the housing space, whether such a large house will fit in a nursery or living room.
How to make a folding cardboard house
If you really want to make a cardboard house with your own hands, but there is not much space for it in the nursery, then you can make it foldable. The advantage of this cardboard house is that you can take it with you to nature, to the country house and just play in the yard with other children.
We will need:
- large box
- Scissors
- Stationery knife
- Scotch
Here are some ideas on how to decorate a cardboard house:
You can draw an alphabet on the house so that the child sees it more often and remembers the letters. Do the same with numbers. The house can be painted white or painted in bright colors.
A very simple version of the house for cunning parents. But the entrance is very interestingly decorated with leaves and ribbons, like a door to a cave in the jungle. You can take this idea to decorate your house.
DIY cardboard house for dolls
Every little girl (and not only a little one) dreams of a dollhouse, but you can make it yourself from cardboard. To do this, you need cardboard boxes and clear instructions for action. How to make a house for dolls with your own hands?
We'll need
- Middle box
- Scissors
- Stationery knife
- Scotch color
- Jewelry (optional)
- Cut the box in half. Cut off the top pieces of each piece.
- From scraps we form a roof and a floor. Mark a triangle at the top and cut it out as shown in the photo below. From the cut off part it is necessary to make a floor. Cut a hole in it for a ladder. Attach the floor to the wall.
- Cut a roof out of cardboard and stick it on with tape. Under it, attach another sheet of cardboard to the walls, this will be the floor of the second floor of the house. Also make a hole in it for the steps.
- Use a utility knife to make holes for the window. The frame can be painted with white paint.
- From the remaining scraps, make steps. Cut through the doors. The basis of the house is ready, decorate it or not - the choice is yours.
- Ideas on how to decorate the house can be seen below.
- The ribbon makes this house much cozier and more comfortable.
- If the dollhouse is painted in pastel colors, it will look much more interesting.
- It is very easy to make such a house. It is enough to take two boxes, cut them in half and glue them together - you get 4 full-fledged rooms. You can ask your child to draw wallpaper for the house on their own.
- A house of six very different and colorful rooms. Would your child love this?
- You can add coziness to the dollhouse by gluing it with pieces of bright fabric and filling it with furniture, which can also be made of cardboard.
Make a cardboard treehouse according to the mockups in the image, decorate the foliage, decorate with flowers or lianas.
Treehouse made of cardboard for toys
Another way to make a cardboard house is to use a cardboard cup. Cut holes in it for windows and the front door, wrap it with parchment paper, repeat the cutouts for windows and doors.
To make a cardboard cup house beautiful and complete, decorate it with green twigs, shrubs or grass. From toothpicks you can make a ladder.
House - accordion made of cardboard
The house is an accordion. Take cardboard and cut out your favorite facade. These can be English houses or Italian facades, the main thing is to decorate the windows with shutters, make sills, you can attach green decorations to the windows, hang curtains or stick awnings. Any decoration is a space for the development of your baby's creativity.
Today we will tell you about how to make a New Year's house out of cardboard with your own hands. In this we can have a step-by-step master class, a diagram and a template that can be downloaded (see below).
Tools and materials Time: 4 hours Difficulty: 7/10
- 1 sheet of designer cardboard of a suitable size for the house (you can use cardboard in two colors: one color for the walls, the other for the roof and window and door decoration) and 1 more sheet for the base on which the house will stand;
- a piece of transparent film to simulate glass in windows;
- a template for a New Year's house made of cardboard (you can draw it yourself or download a drawing);
- scissors;
- glue;
- white small sequins;
- flat and round brush;
- artificial snow.
Now on sale you can even find ready-made kits for making these cute jewelry, but it’s much more fun to do everything yourself from start to finish, attracting the help of kids who will definitely like this activity.
Step by step master class
Step 1
Draw or print out a template and cut out a blank for the house (walls, roof and chimney) from cardboard.
Step 2
We bend the cardboard blank along the fold lines and glue it. To make window shutters and doors look more voluminous, it is better not just to draw them on the walls, but to cut out additional details of the required shape from cardboard and stick them on. From the inside, we seal the window openings with a film that imitates glass.
Step 3
Let's get started with the snow. A jar of artificial snow can be purchased at any craft store. In places where we will have snowdrifts, we apply a little glue and put snow in piles on top of it with a round brush, giving a realistic volume. Remember how the roofs of houses look in winter, and this will help you in your work.
Step 4
When the work with the snow is completed, let the product dry thoroughly, after which we proceed to create a shining ice frost on the walls of the house. To do this, in turn, each wall with a flat brush is completely smeared with glue and evenly sprinkled with a thin layer of white sequins. Blow off excess glitter powder.
Our fabulous house-decoration is almost ready. It remains to decorate the shutters and doors to your taste, as well as glue the craft to the cardboard base.
Alternatively, the house can not be glued, but simply put on top of the base, additionally decorated with homemade trees. And in the evenings, try lighting a battery-powered LED candle inside it. It looks amazing and really looks like a fairy tale!
The level of technology development today allows architects to embody the most daring fantasies from almost any material, which until recently was not intended for the construction of residential structures. At the same time, housing must meet several basic requirements - to be environmentally friendly, durable and prefabricated. All these properties are inherent in modular houses of the original form from no less original material - cardboard.
Wikkelhouse - wrapped house
For more than four years, innovators from the Dutch design studio Fiction Factory have been developing a small mobile home made of corrugated cardboard. Such an unusual choice of material is explained by one of the developers.
Rick Butcher
Cardboard is not appreciated and is widely used only as packaging, but meanwhile, it is light, strong enough, and even the heat and sound insulation indicators are good. And we decided to test it by creating a residential building, even if it is still unusual.
The house is assembled from separate modules, each 4.6 m long, 1.2 m wide, 3.5 m high, weight 500 kg, the number of segments varies depending on the customer's wishes. The modules are a spatial metal frame, which is wrapped with a cardboard tape on a special device, with each turn being glued. It turns out a kind of cocoon of 24 layers, forming walls, floor and roof of the required thickness.
The number and size of windows are determined by the customer, as well as the type of door system - the module looks most advantageous with panoramic glazing. Also at the planning stage, the complete set of the house is also determined - special modules are made with a built-in kitchen, a bathroom and an outlet for a chimney. It is supposed to heat the house in the cold with a wood-burning stove.
Since the weight of a metal frame covered with cardboard is relatively small, a reinforced foundation is not required under the house, usually it is a columnar base, as for carcasses or concrete supports. The finished modules are brought to the site, combined into a single structure, and after installation, the surface of the entire house is covered with a special, waterproof, but breathable film. As a finishing facade material - pine slats. The house does not have a roof in the usual sense, just the upper part of the modules is made in the form of two slopes and is also covered with wood when facing. From the inside, the house is sheathed with plywood, such an interior is successfully combined with an ergonomic shape and a transparent entrance. All materials used in the creation of the house can be reused after processing. The developers predict that Wikkelhouse is able to serve its owners for up to a century, but only on condition that the protective film is updated every three decades.
All children dream of toy houses, which they clumsily try to build from what they have at hand. And sometimes parents do not even realize that there is material in the house from which you can make a wonderful house for children's games - this is ordinary cardboard. Without much effort, waste material can turn into a beautiful and comfortable home - a favorite place for children's games.
Decorating the house, children will develop their imagination. The toy house can become a spaceship or a princess castle for them, taking them on an amazing adventure. Tidying up their toy home, children learn to clean up the house. Having retired to the house, they can organize a secret society or tell horror stories to each other.
Making a house out of cardboard with your own hands is not difficult. Children must be involved in the construction process. It's very interesting and exciting! Helping in construction, children will receive the first architectural knowledge and skills.
Materials and tools
Do-it-yourself cardboard house does not require large material investments. Materials and tools for construction can be found in the household of any family:
- Cardboard boxes of different sizes, glue gun.
- Scissors, sharp knife, pencils, felt-tip pens, markers, adhesive tape.
- Acrylic or watercolor paints, gouache, glitter and various embellishments.
Operating procedure
The sequence of building a cardboard house with your own hands can be different, depending on what architectural structure you want to create. But the general algorithm can be described as follows:
- Find a sketch or diagram on the Internet, print it out on a printer and start acting. If you are an experienced craftsman, you can draw a sketch of the house yourself.
- According to the scheme, cut out the parts and glue them in the desired sequence with adhesive tape.
- Together, you can decorate your building with fun.
Helpful Hints
- It will be great if your boxes include corrugated cardboard.
- Cardboard cutting work should only be carried out by adults.
- For the stability of the house, it is desirable to find cardboard pipes. You can ask for them at a store that sells goods in rolls. If you can't find it, make pipes out of cardboard. To do this, simply roll it into a roll.
- Try to make the door of the house open outward so that the children have more room to play.
- Don't throw away small cardboard boxes. From them you can make a beautiful doll castle for a princess or a garage for cars.
There are many options for do-it-yourself cardboard houses. You yourself can come up with something interesting. We offer several workshops and original ideas for making houses that you can easily build with your children.
DIY folding cardboard house - master class
We will need: a large cardboard box, scissors, a sharp knife, tape.
Step one: cut off the top of the large box, as shown in the diagram. Set aside the cut pieces. We glue the side seams of the box with tape.
Step two: turn the box over and connect its parts in the places indicated by the yellow arrow in the diagram. We make a roof from the cut off parts, connecting the parts with adhesive tape in the places indicated by the arrows. We attach the roof to the side parts.
Step three: cut the cardboard in the place indicated by the yellow dotted lines in the diagram. We connect the parts indicated by the yellow arrows.
A comfortable and functional house is ready. It can be taken apart at any time, played with and put back together again.
Cardboard house with a door - master class
We will need: a large cardboard box, a sharp knife, adhesive tape, acrylic paints or gouache.
Operating procedure:
- We cut out the roof and side parts of the house according to the scheme from cardboard.
- We collect the house and glue the junction of the side seams with tape.
- We glue the roof and cut out the door on three sides, as shown in the figure.
- The window can be cut or drawn.
DIY cardboard mill - master class
We will need: a large cardboard box, a knife, adhesive tape, a wooden stick, a screw, a rope, acrylic paints.
Operating procedure:
- Fold the box as shown in the diagram. From the sides we cut out triangular gables, and on the roof we make holes for the window and pipe.
- According to the pattern, we make a cardboard tube.
- We screw a screw into the tip of a wooden stick and attach it to the roof with a rope.
- According to the scheme, we make a screw and fasten it to a stick along with a screw so that it spins.
- We cut out two triangular windows at the end and fasten the pipe.
- We paint the mill with bright colors.
Do-it-yourself house for Barbie - master class
We will need: two small cardboard boxes, a knife, adhesive tape, glue, acrylic paints, colored paper.
Operating procedure:
- We take two boxes, cut out two windows on the side and glue them together, as shown in the first picture.
- We glue the shelves, the back wall and the roof, made of two pieces of cardboard.
- We cut out beautiful windows, then paint the resulting house with paints or glue it with colored paper.
Cardboard cat house - master class
You can make a wonderful cat house for your pet out of cardboard with your own hands.
We will need: two not very large boxes, a knife, adhesive tape, glue.
Operating procedure:
- We make two small houses according to the size of a cat according to the scheme given in the second lesson. Only one of the houses should be without a roof, there is no need to make doors.
- We cut out the windows, as shown in the diagram and glue one house to another. We hope your kitty enjoys her new home.
Interesting DIY Cardboard House Ideas
- A cottage with a starry sky can be made from cardboard boxes with skillful hands.
- Surprisingly beautiful doll houses are obtained from cardboard if they are pasted over with a bright cloth.
- Unusual architectural cardboard structures are simply amazing.
- A transforming dollhouse can be made from cardboard according to the attached scheme.
We hope that our lessons, ideas and tips will help you in creating wonderful toy houses. You will certainly get a joyful mood and indescribable emotions as a result of your creativity.
With your own hands - in the material you will find templates and simple step-by-step instructions with photos.
Even super-cool store-bought toys never outdo those made by caring moms. In addition, children can also be involved in the work - then it will be even more fun and creative! Make a do-it-yourself dollhouse out of cardboard, and so that it is not empty, settle in it.
In order to make a toy house out of cardboard with your own hands, you will need:
- cardboard
- cotton fabric
- glue / glue gun
How to make a DIY cardboard toy house for kids. Step by step instructions with photo
To get started, print or draw and cut out the details according to the template example. Two walls with a ledge under the roof, two walls - without, two parts for the roof and one door.
Then circle the details on the fabric. Leaving an allowance of 1-1.5 centimeters. Cut out the details. Cut off the corners as shown in the photo.
Bend the fabric around the perimeter, glue it to the cardboard parts.
To make windows in a cardboard house, cut the fabric with the letter X where the windows on the cardboard part are located, wrap the resulting shreds inside and glue them.
When all the details of the cardboard house are completely ready, we glue them together, as shown in the photo.
