Any good How to Train Your Dragon party or Viking party needs to have a DIY Viking ship included in the decorations. For my first How to Train Your Dragon party, I built a huge mast and sail and made an entire table into a Viking ship. Hindsight has shown me that this is probably a little bit overkill for most people.
Ha. But that’s not to say it’s not out of the realm of possibility. When our family had a How to Train Your Dragon movie night, I took the basic DIY Viking ship idea and made it a doable centerpiece in a few minutes, something that can be done by everyone!
DIY Viking Ship Centerpiece
Materials
- White posterboard
- Red card stock or red posterboard
- Black card stock
- 18 inch dowel rod on a base
- Brown craft paper
- Dragon silhouette SVG file
- or Dragon silhouette PDF file
- Viking shield file
Build your DIY Viking ship sail
In theory, you could blow this Viking sail up as large as any paper you can get your hands on. But since we are doing a small tabletop decoration, we will be using materials that are pretty easy to get a hold of.
Cut a 10.5 x 14“ rectangle from your sheet of white posterboard. From your red posterboard or cardstock, cut a 10.5 x 6.5 rectangle.
For the dragon silhouette, I’ve included files to cut a dragon on your Cricut machine with an SVG file as I did. No cutting machine? Use the PDF file and a pair of scissors. Really, y’all, those Cricut machines are such timesavers! (As you will find out if you cut the dragon with scissors.)
Assembly is crazy simple. You’re going to put the red stripe in the middle of the white posterboard. Matching up the 10.5 inch wide side. Just use a bit of glue stick or double stick tape to it here.
With a glue stick, evenly spread adhesive onto the back of your dragon should look at that center on to the red stripe.
Use a hole punch to cut holes in the top and the bottom of the sail.
Depending on the diameter of your dowel rod, you may have to cut a slit in addition to your hole punch to accommodate the dowel rod.
Making the DIY Viking ship base
I totally free hand cut the bottom of the paper DIY Viking ship. The one shown in the pictures is bit larger than what I could manage to supply you with in a template, but I have faith you can cut this on your own!
To cut the Viking ship base out, I layered 2 large pieces of the brown kraft paper on top of each other. I’d guestimate the paper was 24 inches wide by 10 or so inches tall. Fold the papers in half and then draw on a boat shape. You don’t need any fancy curls or anything, just a very basic boat shape. If you would like the fancy curly cues on the ends of the boat, you can draw on a basic boat shape, then use a small cup to trace circles on the ends.
Using your glue stick, glue together just the ends of the boat. You want the middle part open to stick the mast through.
Depending on how thick your brown kraft paper is, you may need to reinforce it so it stands up properly. I used a few scrap pieces of card stock and glued them inside either side of the ship.
Print and cut out the printable sheet of Viking shields. Use glue stick or a glue gun to put them along the top edge of your Viking ship.
The Viking ship mast
I have used this particular prop for so many things over the last five years. I believe it started its life as a donut skewer. I threaded a bunch of donuts through the stick and topped it off with a pretty finial. Later, it became a flamingo amongst other things.
All it is is a wooden circle you can find at any craft store with a hole drilled in the middle. The dowel rod is stuck and glued into the hole. Cut the dowel to size and paint. It’s a good thing to have in your party prop closet. It can also hold signs later on after it is done being a Viking ship. Or you can turn it into a flamingo.
Final assembly of the DIY Viking ship
Open the middle of the boat and place it over the dowel rod and arrange it around the base.
Slide the DIY Viking ship sale over the dowel rod.
The bottom hole goes on first and then he top home slides over the top of the dowel rod. This should make for a very sturdy mast.
As I mentioned, you can make this project bigger or smaller depending on your needs. I think a whole fleet of these DIY Viking ships would look pretty cool on a dessert table. You could make some sails black and red with white dragons on them to include the new light dragon from the How to Train your Dragon movies. Or if you’re having a good old Viking time, you may not need to include the dragons on the sails at all!
And there you have a simple, but fast DIY Viking ship project that anyone can pull off. It’s just a few cuts and a little bit of glue–and a perfect accompaniment to a How to Train your Dragon birthday party decorations.
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