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Hello Gourmet Kosher Cooking readers, I’m Sara Rivka the creator of www.creativejewishmom.com ^[2], and it’s so great to be here sharing a fun Purim craft for the whole family!  This year I’m thinking about castles — castles made out of recycled cardboard tubes and a shoebox, of course! I’ve always wanted to make a castle, and realized that a colorful castle crafted by the parents or the kids or both, could be a fantastic centerpiece for the Purim sueda! There’s so many ways to go with this idea as far as materials and size. And if you don’t need a centerpiece so how about a castle mishloach manot? Just build your castle on the lid of  the shoe box and voila! 

When you’re building your castle do take in to consideration how it will look from all sides so that it truly will be an amazing centerpiece! Here’s a view of mine from the back:

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You’ll Need:

• cardboard tubes of all kinds, also mailing tubes which tend to be much wider!
• round cans or just about anything thick and round, how about a piece of pvc pipe?
• a shoe box
• wrapping paper
• colored paper
• sheer patterned disposable table runner fabric, it’s stiff and easy to work with
• glittered craft foam
• hot glue and/or high tack craft glue like Alene’s
• mod podge
• wooden skewers

How To:

Follow my directions, but since your castle won’t be exactly like mine, don’t be afraid to re-invent this project a bit!

1. Cover the bottom of your shoe box with some fun patterned wrapping paper. If you’ll be making a castle gift box, so cover the bottom of the shoe box and the lid separately, and continue to build your castle on the lid. 
2. Cover the bottom of the shoebox (namely the base for your castle) with a solid piece of paper, using mod podge or diluted white glue, as the patterned wrapping paper might be a bit too distracting.
3. Cover toilet paper tubes, some cut down to half their size and some stacked two together (or more) with the sheer sparkled (gold in my case) table runner material.
4. Cover your largest tube, (mine is actually a box that held a bottle of scotch, so glad to finally use it!) with a bright piece of solid colored paper and make some window or castle-like details of some kind by applying pieces of colored paper with mod podge.
5. Make some window and door details for the shoe box portion of your castle and affix with mod podge.
6. Now it’s time to make roofs and details using the sparkled craft foam! Roofs are basically circles with one slit cut in them, from the edge to the center, and then you overlap the pieces on either side of the slit to form a little cone shape, and adhere with hot glue. Attach the roofs with hot glue or high tack glue. Attach look-out tower details (forgot what those are called!) to the tallest tubes, as well as some peep holes and tiny windows, using hot glue or high tack glue.
7. Glue everything together, both to the base and to each other where possible, make a few flags and you’re done!
8. Sit back and enjoy gazing at your wonderful castle and give yourself a pat on the back, you really are royalty if you managed to make this palace with everything else that’s going on before Purim!

Purim Sameach and please do stop by and visit me at www.creativejewishmom.com ^[2] for lots more fun projects for Purim, and year round! Hope to see you there.