Once Upon a Princess 3D Castle tutorial

I have been eyeing the castle on the Once Upon a Princess cartridge for quite some time, but it has looked so overly involved I was scared of it. It REALLY was not that bad. The hardest part was figuring out which cut was which part of the castle so I could make sure I had the right color paper for the right cut. Once I figured that out it was not difficult...just time consuming. Once all the cuts were done it took me about an hour to fold/glue/assemble completely.

This is a very "bare bones" version. Nothing extra at all 

(it was my practice before making a very gorgeous pink one, lol).  

I figured I would post  some tips/suggestions I figured out in case others wanted to try making one.

First, I don't know how I would have done this as smoothly and as quickly as I did without my Martha Stewart scoring board. It was a life saver. If you don't have one, take your 40% off an item coupon to Micheal's and get one. I love mine! You have to score each column several times but more importantly, you have to score each roof and the lines would be a bit difficult to fold without scoring I think.

Here are images of my cartridge book with what each piece is written in.

The lower image is the white towers on my castle. 

The shifted image is the very light gray (almost white) wall that completely surrounds the tall white towers.

Sorry this one is a bit blurry. This is the layer on page 65. 

The base layer has two parts:

    The top is the piece that holds the two tall white towers in place. 

         (It is essentially the floor inside that little inner fort that you cut.)

    The bottom is the two outer side walls.

Shift on this layer is going to be the floor that surrounds the little fort (lies between the outside walls and the inner fort). **The little crown looking things on the outside of the castle are actually the tabs from this floor. They pass through a slit in the walls, fold up and glue. So, when choosing the color for the floor make it the color you want those little pieces to be on the outside of your castle.

This is the next page (76). The base image is the front wall and the back wall. The image does not show the arch door, but, the top cut is the front of the castle and the door will cut even though it is not shown.

This is Shift Layer on page 76. This will be all the roof pieces. The top two are for the inner/tall towers. The bottom four are for the four corners (Important if you are going to make them different colors :)

I used my Gypsy to make this. I used a height of "11" as the standard measurement. It took 11 layers/pieces of paper to cut. I have read online people saying the biggest you can make it using the cricut dial is to set the dial at 8.5 inches (that is how I'll do my next one so I can emboss the walls etc; afterwards. I wanted a big castle, but the pieces were too big to emboss).

Hopefully this is helpful to anyone thinking of trying the castle. It's super cute now that it's finished and I love that I can make it not so girly and my son loves it as much as my daughter!