How to make a dragon cave and magic dragon egg

For this month's Bostik Bloggers challenge the theme was Dragons. The children love the toy dragons that they have, and with lots of pretty sparkly coins and jewels included among the craft materials, we decided to make a play cave for their dragons to live in and store their treasure. We also made a magic dragon egg for the cave.

For the dragon cave you need:

A small cardboard box
A flat piece of thick cardboard for the base
Other junk modelling materials - we used screwed up newspaper as that was all we had but you could also use small boxes, egg box cartons, pieces of polystyrene etc.
Bostik White Glu
Tissue paper (black or grey is best, but you can use any colour and paint it)
Paints - you might want black, white, grey, green or silver
Foam sheets in appropriate colours
Coloured felt
Bostik Glitter Pens
Piles of plastic coins, jewels, strings of sequins, coloured buttons and so on to decorate the inside of the cave.
A toy dragon or two - we used our small green dragon from the Playmobil Dragon Fortress.

First you need to build your cave - this is the part that takes the longest! I cut open a cardboard box, cut off the top flaps, and taped the base back together to make it more cave like at the back. Then I mounted it onto a piece of flat cardboard. I used rolled up newspaper around the edges to make some rocks and to give it a bit more texture.

Then the children could get involved. We mixed some Bostik White Glue with water (approximately two parts glue to one part water) to thin it out a bit. This makes the glue go further, and it is also easier to spread, making the tissue paper wetter and easier to manipulate. I tore the black tissue paper up into quite large pieces which we coated with glue and used to cover the box and the scrunched up newspaper. I finished by covering the whole thing with another layer of glue to make sure that it was all stuck down, then we left it outside in the sun to dry.

When it was dry we used some grey paint to give the rocks a few highlights and make it look more realistic. I also used some green felt to cover the flat base in front of the cave, and Harry made some stepping stones from green foam, all stuck down with the White Glu.

Then we finished the cave by painting it all over with some of the Glitter Pens.

I squeezed them out onto a plastic lid so that the children could apply the glitter glue with brushes which meant that they covered the cave nicely.

I stuck some strings of green sequins to one side of the cave to make some shiny vines hanging down, then we filled the cave with the jewels, plastic coins, the dragon egg and of course a dragon!

I'm so pleased how well it turned out, I think it looks fab and it will make a great addition to our Dragon castle play set up!

For the magic dragon egg you need:

A styrofoam egg
Gold or silver acrylic paint
Sequins, jewels and glitter to decorate

First you need to paint the egg, which is a little fiddly. I stuck a cocktail stick into the bottom of the egg, then the other end into a large ball of Bostik Blu Tak to hold it stable while I painted it. It needed a couple of coats of paint to cover completely, but it doesn't need to be completely smooth.

When it's dry, decorate it with a selection of sequins and jewels, using plenty of Bostik White Glu to hold them all in place. If you have lots of smaller sequins you might find it easier to just coat the egg in glue and dip it into the sequins, or sprinkle them over the top. I held it while Mia dropped the sparkly things onto it over a sheet of newspaper. Then place it safely in the cave, guarded by a dragon!

This box of craft materials was provided to me free of charge by Bostik as part of the Tots100/Bostik Craft Bloggers Club.