Make A Cardboard City Neighborhood from Old Boxes

One of the things I wanted to do was try to make this project as eco-friendly as I could. Most of the cardboard boxes we receive are covered in stickers or printing, which can kind of kill the creative vibe.

Instead of covering them with more paper or paint, I discovered that it’s incredibly easy to just cut them apart, turn them inside out and use a strip of water-activated Kraft tape to put them back together.

It’s much greener than recovering, ten times faster, and creates a perfect blank canvas for creativity! The water-activated packaging tape is also REALLY easy to paint over (unlike clear plastic packing tape).

Inspired by the cool neighborhoods filled with old brick walkups in Chicago and New York, we decided to give these a little texture with a homemade stamp.

Using a few different colors of acrylic paint and a rectangular stamp (just a piece of cut foam glued to cardboard) we stamped out a simple brick pattern on our boxes.

You can make your own stamp shapes from old styrofoam, sponges, blocks, or anything to add textures!

Once the paint has dried, you can start playing with the arrangement of your boxes to see how you’d like to make them into buildings. This is a great opportunity to take a walk, go on a building hunt, and make some notes about what you might like to include in your own city.

How are actual buildings and neighborhoods arranged? What do the windows and doors look like? What interesting things do you see? Once your buildings are arranged, you may want to use a piece of packing tape or glue to secure them together.

Once we had finished a little loose planning and playing around, we added some empty windows and doors that could be doodled in later.

I made a little printable windows and doors template pack filled with different sizes and styles you can choose from, but you can also draw your own set on construction paper with a ruler and black marker.

Once you’ve cut out your windows, you can try out different arrangements on the building and glue them on with a glue stick.

With spring on the way, we wanted to include some fresh, green rooftop gardens! We simply filled an old cardboard jewelry box with dirt, cut small clippings from our succulents, and planted them in the box top and bottom.

Voila! Just like that, you have beautiful green rooftop planters! Succulents don’t need much water, so we didn’t line our boxes, but if you’re using a plant you’ll need to water, you can waterproof yours by pushing a square of tin foil or a sandwich bag in the bottom (coming up the sides) before filling with dirt.

You have all the building basics done – now it’s time to start bringing it to life by adding all the details! From here on out, you can let your imagination run wild using different art mediums to tell fun visual stories and create the bits & pieces that will make your neighborhood come alive!

Will it look like your own “real life” neighborhood, or will it be a wild imaginary place? Will you use lots of colors or just a few? Are your buildings homes or businesses?

Maybe there’s graffiti or a mural on the sides of one of your buildings, little hidden doors, or surprises!

We added a few simple cardboard trees, a street, some road signs, and a string of twinkly lights to ours. A piece of poster board makes a fantastic bright sky backdrop too!

What is the best way to bring this neighborhood to life? Fill it with doodles! You can color directly in the windows if you prefer, but I found the best way to do this was to trace the empty window spaces onto a few sheets of paper, then have the kids fill them in with drawings.

We cut out around the doodles and used a tiny dab of glue to put them in our windows.

Doing it this way allowed them to play around with where the drawings were and change them around. We just used a black marker to give it a cool graphic look, but you can use crayons, markers, pastels, or whatever you want!