Cardboard Box Dragon Craft – How To

We came up with a cardboard box dragon craft! Eva was asked to make a 3d model dragon as part of her creative homework around ‘The Reluctant Dragon’ story. We love to craft, most days Izzy has free reign of the crafts and we regularly come up with ideas such as our cardboard castle we made last week that we shared over on Instagram.

We spent a day or so trawling through Pinterest and various other sites before deciding we should just come up with our own idea!

Cardboard Box Dragon craft

Creating a Base

We started off with A cardboard box and a shoebox. Opening out the shoebox and placing it on top of the larger cardboard box gave us a fab dragon head shape to start off with.

Starting our cardboard box dragon craft - shoebox taped on top of normal carboard box.

We secured the boxes with masking tape all the way around. This gave us a good base to paint on.

Creating a base to paint our cardboard box dragon.

Preparing & Attaching Add-ons

Next up, we made 2 paper maché rings for nostrils and 2 eyes to dry for later.

Then, we cut out top & bottom teeth for our dragon. We also cut flame shapes onto yellow, orange & reddish orange card. Finally, we cut out a pair of ears for our cardboard box dragon.

Dragons Ears, Teeth & Flames cut out ready for sticking on to our dragon

When the nostrils were dry we taped those to the front of our dragon before painting. We also added our teeth and flames.

Adding flames to our cardboard box dragon

Painting Our Dragons

Already looking quite dragon-like, we decided to paint our first dragon green! Whilst the paint dried we filled the mouth & nostrils in with black Posca pens.

Cardboard Box Dragon Craft - Halfway through with nostrils, teeth & flames coming from it's mouth.

The paper maché eyes we painted white, using the black Posca again for the pupils. Whilst the eyes dried, we attached the dragon’s ears.

Our Dragons Coming Alive!

Izzy decided she wanted her dragon to have eyes painted on instead of making paper mache eyes. As soon as she painted the eyes on, her dragon instantly came alive! She made the eyes look sideways ‘to look cute whilst he breathes fire’ and he definitely does look cute! Although I say he, Izzy later decided her dragon was a girl.

Izzy pictured, painting her dragons eyes on with black paint very carefully.

With Izzy being younger, it worked out easier to paint the eyes on before sticking on the flames & teeth. This saved paint being spilt on anything and causing upset.

Cute cardboard box dragon painted red with teeth & flames!

Once Izzy’s dragon was dry we added on the teeth & flames and her dragon started to look great. We attached those along with ears and wings on both dragons to complete them.

Izzy's Red Cardboard Box Dragon.

Eva finished off her dragon with some detail on the horns which I think looks really cool.

Eva's Green Carboard Box Dragon

How awesome do they look!? We are really happy with how our dragons turned out and hope our cardboard box dragon craft inspires our readers too!

Red and Green Cardboard Box Dragons

Fancy trying it out? Pin the image below for a list of what you will need.

 

Items you will need for your owncardboard box dragon craft

What do you think of our cardboard box dragon craft? Are you going to make a dragon of your own?

Burnished Chaos