Belznickle Blogspot : The Steadfast Tin Soldier Diorama

"What a perfect wife she would make for me!" he thought. "But she might be too grand. She's used to a Castle. It would be hard to ask her to move into a box with me and my twenty-four brothers. Still I wish I could get to know her." tin soldier (from our families book about The Steadfast Tin Soldier illustrated by Fred Marcellino)

Left the front view of my cardboard castle diorama. Right, the backside.

This is a different version of the Steadfast Tin Soldier.

Read about our version in a book review here.

To make a diorama similar to this one you will need to gather the following supplies. The project has many details and will take some older students (4th and 5th graders) more than one day to complete.

Dancing ballerina, 3 sizes. Make skirt covers the upper leg.
Craft paper ballerina finger puppets here.
Make ballerina clothespin dolls here.

Supply List: on the right include a printable of ballerina.

a shoe box lid
brown paper bags
a fine tip black permanent marker
Mod Podge
green paper
a metallic wrapping paper
kitchen foil
several cotton balls
white school glue
masking tape
10 or 11 acorn caps
one tooth-pick
green glitter
printable of the ballerina (just right) and the tin soldiers (below)
extra white paper for the swans
one cup cake paper cup liner for skirt
ribbon (3-4 inches)
colored pencils,
two long narrow boxes the exact same size for the towers of the castle
a jewel for the dancer's skirt.
both flimsy and heavy scrap cardboard
newsprint

To make the figures for this diorama, print the patterns given below. Cut-out the figures and use colored pencils to color in the ballerina's arm, leg and face. Color all of the tin soldiers costume using a brilliant red and navy blue. Glue on the ruffled part of a cupcake liner to the dancer's waist to create a tulle skirt and finish off her costume with a silk ribbon bow and a small jewel bead. Color her tiara of flowers pink or blue. You may also wish to add details like a feather to the cap of the tin soldier. Mount both of the figures on flimsy cardboard, like the kind used to make cereal boxes with. You can further craft a small stand for the tin soldier and also glue a toothpick to the bottom of the ballerina's toe. About half of the toothpick many be pasted to the backside of her leg; let the other half stick out from the tip of her pointing toe. This will be poked inside the cardboard steps and secured with hot glue when the time comes to mount her inside the diorama.

Use a hot glue gun to assemble the acorn "trees." squeeze the glue inside the caps and stack these on top of each other until you have trees the height you prefer. Smear a bit of white glue onto the surfaces of these nut-cap trees and sprinkle on as much green glitter as you like.

Step-by-Step Instructions for The Castle:

To make the castle for this diorama, you will need to cut a backing to secure the two towers onto each end.
Then using masking tape, firmly wrap and glue this wall structure to the inverted side of a shoe box lid.
Cut and fold a cardboard roof to bend and then sandwich between the towers.
Cover the towers with brown wrapping paper and white school glue.
Cover the roof between the two with green paper.
Make sure that the space between the towers and beneath the roof is large enough to include the ballerina inside the gap.
Cover this gap's back wall and steps with decorative Christmas wrap.
Hot glue and mount the paper dancer by poking her toothpick tipped slipper inside the cardboard steps.
Mount the aluminum foil covered lake in front at the foot of the steps.
Hot glue acorn stacked trees around the lake.
Glue in the swans and cover the surfaces with cotton batting to make the foreground look as though it is covered with snow.
Now use the black permanent marker with a fine tip to draw on bricks or stones of the castle.
Mod Podge the castle structure.
Glue on additional snow around the towers and on the roof if you like.

The details of the mirrored lake where the wax swans swam.
Except, our swans are made of paper.

In order to make the lake for the swans, cut a piece of cardboard in the shape you would like for the frozen pond; cover this with white school glue and then wrap the little mirrored lake with kitchen tin foil. Mount this on the bottom of the diorama's inverted, shoe-box lid just in front of the steps. Use the step-by-step instructions below to draw your swans on the extra white paper with a maker. Cut these swans out but include a small tab at the bottom of each swan. Fold this tab backwards (out of sight) and dab it with glue. Press the sticky tab firmly in place on top of the foil lake where ever you would like the swans to be swimming.