DIY Christmas-Tangled Tower

Here is the first of the blog posts I promised for "easy" DIY Christmas gifts.  If I can pull them off then they must be easy as I am the least craftiest person ever!

My daughters LOVE the movie Tangled.  In fact they watch it everyday, no joke!.  Kimmy is the most vocal about her love for all things Tangled and all she asked for for Christmas was "Punzel this" and "Punzel that".  Mainly she wanted a "Punzel doll" and a "punzel Tower".  We got the doll but the Towers were just so pricey.  I found 3 different towers and they ranged in price from $35-129!.  They all got horrible reviews too, saying they were flimsily made and fell apart easily.  Even the $129 one, which you would think would be sturdy and well made by the price, had many negative reviews saying the plastic was thin and cheap and fell apart easily.  Because of this we skipped out on buying a Tower.

not the prettiest tower in the world but it will do.

Then one night, while being kept awake by Miss Anti-Sleep Karma, it occurred to me that maybe I could attempt to make a tower myself.  I mean, if they were going to be easily broken it might as well be something inexpensive.  Plus that's 1 less Made in China potentially toxic toy not in my house.
I began looking for items around my house that looked like a tower and settled on Oatmeal containers. 

Now, I just made this up in my head and I am not a crafty person, so there are probably easier ways to do this but I am not aware of them.

I apologize right now about the pictures.  Everything appears way darker than it does in real life.  I don't have a real camera right now, just my phone and the lighting was very poor in my house today since it's all cloudy and rainy outside.

supplies- I used the egg carton to place the paint in.

What You Will Need:
2 empty cylinder oatmeal containers
Paint- at least red, blue, yellow, white and black so you can mix other colors as needed.
Paint brushes
Glue

To Assemble:

First clean out oatmeal containers.
Place on top of newspaper on a smooth sturdy surface- I used our dining room table
Mix black and white pain to create a grey stone color.
Paint outsides of oatmeal containers with the grey.  NOW- If you are smart you will use a knife to cut out spaces in the back of each container first so the tower is open to be played in.  I was not smart and painted the entire thing and then had to cut out portions after the paint dried which means I wasted my time and paint on those portions.

first layer on the outside- dark grey

Once the grey paint dried I added extra white to the mixed paint I had and dipped a damp cloth into the lighter grey and sponged/twisted it on top to try and give a stone finish to it.

"stone finish" with lighter grey

I attempted to paint the inside walls purple and pink.  I could not get the purple to be the nice light purple most Tangled items come in though.  If you want this color it may be a good idea to buy it and not try to mix it yourself.

While the inside paint dried I added vines on the outside, well I tried to anyways, they are pretty rudimentary.

my wanna be vines

Once the inside paint was dry I painted the "floor" grey.  Then I added a "fireplace" and "picture frame" using some brown paint.  I painted in the fir place black.
In the picture I was trying to recreate the picture Rapunzel painted of herself watching the lanterns so I painted in some green "hills" and the sky black.

While the fire place and picture dried I added a lighter green to the vines and some flowers.

Then I added the "log" and "fire" to the fire place and "Rapunzel" and the lanterns to the picture.  At least I TRIED to add that stuff in.

DON'T LAUGH! hehe

One all the paint was dry I glued the lid on top of the purple level-which I am leaving blank because I am just not creative enough to figure out what to add there!
I added glue on top of the lid and glued the pink level on top of the purple.

in retrospect I only needed to paint a "ground"
on the bottom section of the tower-owell!!

I tried to find a styrofoam cone shape in the craft section at Walmart top glue on top of the second level but they didn't have any so I just painted the lid brown and glued it on top.

in real life it looks brown I swear!

FYI- You may want to paint the first lid green, at least the edges, before gluing on.  Otherwise it stands out really bad and it's a lot harder to paint the edges green once it's already glued on.  I painted the edge "inside" of the tower grey to match the floor.  I was going to add a rug on the floor of the top level but chickened out.

Not the best looking Tangled Tower in the world but I think my girls will like it, at least I hope so!  I don't think it will last past January in our home though, not with Karma's destructive ways.

I bought this set for them to play with inside of the tower:

I am going to wrap them up together.



Love,
this wanna be crafty mama,
Christy

P.S. check out my Made in the USA Paint- woo-hoo!!

P.P.S. I apologize now for any errors, I have to go to my sons school for caroling in the halls soon and don't have time to proof read right now.