I love plasticard, it’s a great material. Light, strong, cheap, simple to cut, glues great and easy to paint. It’s perfect for making lots of buildings for infinity, and inspired by Kiblam’s series of videos I’ve made a load of simple cuboid buildings.

To make a centerpiece I wanted something bigger and different. After seeing the new Plasticraft buildings I realised there’s one more advantage to plasticard, it’s flexible so you can make curved shapes. I experimented and made a small curved wall building and decided to make the biggest possible building with an A4 plasticard sheet as the roof.

To make this you’ll need:

2 1/2 A4 Plasticard sheets (0.75mm-1mm thick, I used 0.75mm)

Card

Knife (box cutter or scalpel good)

Ruler

Plastic glue

PVA glue (for gluing the card)

Here’s my deeply complex design:

When cutting plastic it’s best to score gently first, then follow the score line repeatedly until you either cut through or can fold and snap the shape out. When gluing, use only a little first to just get the pieces stuck together and then go back and reinforce with more after, excess glue on the surface will cause problems and avoid getting on your fingers as you will literally melt fingerprints onto the plastic.

Steps:

Take the first A4 sheet and cut 2mm off the long end, this is your roof Take the second and cut 2 times 60mm x Y (piece 2, your long sides) and 2 times 30mm x Y (piece 4, balcony walls). Keep the reminding length for making cover walls and decoration stripes. Take the third sheet and cut 2 times 60 x X (piece 3, short walls) Snap out your pieces. Make the box, glue using the plastic glue starting with one long side and one short side, the long side will extend 1mm over the roof on both sides to allow gluing the short wall. Once the box is dry, glue the cover walls and one side of the balcony walls to it, I glued the cover walls first so I could use them to level the balcony by placing upside down. When the balcony walls glue is dry, bend round and glue to other side, using something heavy on both sides to hold in place while it dries. A vice or clamps is good, but I used books. Once dry, put card under the balcony and trace out the shapes for the balcony floors. Cut out the floors leaving a little extra overlap on the straight end for gluing. Don’t worry about being too accurate, PVA glue will fill small gaps in the curve. Glue with PVA the balcony floors to the building on the straight edge and use a little plasticard stripe on the curves to support the floor at the ends. To fill the gaps in the floor and fix the floors, tip the building up long ways vertically then add a little PVA at the top of the curves from underneath. Let gravity and surface tension make the PVA flow down the curve filling the gaps, adding more if necessary. Support it and let it dry before doing the same for the other side. Sand any imperfections or mistakes. Glue on some decoration stripes, doors and windows (I used card for these). Seal/Prime the building for painting, avoid water based paint on the card to avoid warping (I use Rustoleum painters touch) or use a little PVA to seal.

Now you can paint as you like, I used my standard grey/white highlights on edges for NMM style, a hex loose mask on the roof and some block colour.

You can use the method to make any size of building with curved walls/balconies, with sizes so they stack and hold each other for easy storage.

With models: