This puffy tulle carriage was a big hit at my little girls birthday party. What started off being a photo booth ended up being the center attraction.
When I decided that this was what I wanted for her party I started to look around online to see if I could find some ideas. To my surprise I only found one site that had a printed cardboard carriage. I wanted my carriage to have life, not just flat you know??
I came up with an idea on how to make my own for less than the going rate of the printed cardboard. AND, because I wanted to use tulle I wanted to be able to take it apart when I was done leaving the tulle useful for another project. The blue tulle for the body is one continuous piece. the only pieces I needed to cut out smaller were the wheels (it's a long piece of tulle anyway) and door pieces. All the tulle is reusable if you want to keep it.
First I needed FREE cardboard. I work in an office and we recycle our boxes, all sizes. So it took some time but I collected the biggest thickest boxes we had. Once I had enough I broke them down and glued two layers together.
My first layer had the corrugated lines going vertically, my second layer had the corrugated lines going horizontally. You need this for some stability.
When gluing your pieces together make sure any marking on the box are on the inside so that they don't show.
Also, you should glue your pieces so that they overlap other pieces, they should not match up.
if they do you won't be able to make a large enough piece to cut your image out of.
My piece ended up being about 4 feet tall and 5 feet wide.
After you glue your pieces and it's all dry, draw or sketch your image on the cardboard piece.
TIP:I drew mine on the front and I didn't cut exactly where my lines where so I was still able to see them. I did paint over them eventually but it you use a light color you'll still see them. If you're going to use tulle or another form of fabric to cover up your piece then no need to worry but if you're not using any fabric and just paining like I did on my train you'll want to draw is out on the back side. Just pay attention to the direction because once you flip your piece back over it will be facing the opposite direction of your initial drawing.
Once your piece is drawn, you cut.
I only did two layers for my base because I knew I would be cutting out by hand.
I would not recommend gluing more than two pieces unless you have the means to use an electric saw…I did not.
This is where elbow grease comes in and you come out with sore arms and legs HAHA.
I cut my piece on the kitchen floor with a large self-healing mat underneath my cardboard piece.
This was a bit time consuming as I needed to cut slowly.
I used a rotary trimmer for the majority of my cuts but I also used a teeny tiny exacto knife…that's all I had to work with.
I tried using a small non mechanical hand saw but that was no good.
So now all the pieces are cut and now you paint…Because I was using Tulle I knew it would be kind of see through and I also knew I would not actually cover every inch of cardboard.
I painted my pieces with the same color of the tulle so no one would notice the cardboard underneath the tulle.
Your piece is now painted and now it's time to add the tulle…this is the other time consuming part…yay
For this step you'll need Tulle, floral wire, wire cutters and tape, any wide tape, I used packaging tape but with all the playing the tape started to peel off.
I cut a whole bunch of floral wire down to 4 inches and I grabbed my tulle and wire cutters.
My wire cutter were pointy so I was able to pierce a hole is my cardboard with them.
If you don't have pointy wire cutters to pierce the whole you can use anything else you might have like a paper piercer or a screw driver.
the hole has to be big enough to put the wire through.
The first how actually needs to be big enough to pull the tulle through, once that's done you will start making your other holes.
Grab your tulle loosely and wrap the wire around the tulle, don't loop it around the tulle just wrap it so the wire looks like a "U" then slid the ends of the wire through the hole.
On the backside you can twist and bend the wire flat against the cardboard or open up the wire so it stays put.
You'll do this throughout the entire cardboard piece until you've reached your desired puffiness.
as you add wire to your piece you can immediately tape it down in the back so that you don't cut yourself like I did or you can wait until it's all done to add take and still cut yourself like I did…yeah, my hands were kind of beat up after I was done but it was worth it.
You'd notice that after you cut the part for the door on the carriage your cardboard piece becomes flimsy, if you don't want to actually make the door movable don't cut it out and this will leave your pieces stable.
If you do cut it out you need to place some 2x4 in the back so that it stands straight.
If I wear to do this again I would just cut out the window to the door and not the whole door.
That is pretty much it.
