Cardboard MLB Stadium

In this Instructable, I will teach you how to build a Ballpark like the one featured above. This model was made using simple everyday materials, and will make a great decoration for the sports enthusiast. It should be noted that most of my techniques and ideas came from a great channel called Paper Stadiums. You can check him out on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/c/PaperStadiums, or on Twitter at http://x.com/PaperStadiums

Please keep in mind that a project like this can be very hard to convey in words, so if you are stuck on anything, its usually best to look closely at the pictures included to figure it out.

With that, lets jump into the project.

1. Cardboard
2. Paper (Regular and Cardstock)
3. Hot Glue
4. Markers (Dollarama)
5. Paint Markers (Amazon) (Optional)
6. Pencils
7. Ruler
8. 1 Sheet Of Foam Board
9. White Glue
10. Mathematical Instruments
11. Strip Lights (Optional)

To begin, you need a pencil, as well as some simple mathematical Instruments: A Compass, a Ruler, and a Half-Circle Protractor. These tools are essential for the complex shapes of a Baseball Diamond. I printed out a sheet of a few random Baseball field shapes, just to give me ideas. I ended up going with a sort of mix between number 3 and 4. You could make yours entirely up, or if you want to go for a iconic field shapes from a stadium you love, go ahead.

In this step we will begin drawing the field, and we need to establish the perimeters of the actual diamond. On a MLB field, you have your Infield dirt, and your outfield grass, but around the edges there is more grass, and a ring of dirt, or the warning track, then encircles all that. The picture above shows what I mean. So, we need two lines, perpendicular to each other, 90 degrees, to mark that. I drew this in the bottom corner of my standard printer paper, with about two inches left on each side, for the extra edge. Keep in mind through this whole project that no two MLB fields are the same, and any misshapes do not really matter, as it could just be part of the stadium. I also drew in the batters box, but it doesn't really matter all that much, because in the end I did not actually include it or the foul Lines, as they don't add that much to the over all aesthetics, and are hard to draw in perfectly to scale.

Here the Infield dirt begins to take shape, and you must use you Compass to get the perfect circles. Take note of the shape of it all, and where the pitchers mound is located. The batting circle is bigger than the pitching mound as well, and I drew the line for the edge of the infield with the compass, from the mound. Notice in the last picture that I drew in the curve for the edge of the actual field.

Now, draw the edge of the entire field. This part of a field is always completely different from stadium to stadium, and mine changed shape several times before I decide on one. Remember the warning track of dirt that runs all the way around the field. You can see that on the right side of my field it is much wider, and that is okay, as each field differs according to the building it's in. In the next step well begin the coloring of the field.

Now we begin the warning strip of dirt that encircles the field. Use a thin tipped brown marker to outline everything, so you know your boundaries. After, fill in the areas as shown above. It is essential to use smooth flowing lines, like it would be groomed in a real field.

Here we can use a thin tipped green marker to outline the infield dirt area, then I filled in that area with a tan paint marker, as the lines go together a lot smoother than with the wet markers. Now we have all our dirt on the field, and we will move onto the grassy areas.

Now we begin the most important aesthetic of the whole field. This is a very important step, and its crucial that you take your time here. Use a ruler to get straight lines of light green around the pitchers mound, then use a darker green with a ruler on a slightly different angle to get that criss-crossed mowing pattern. Using careful measuring, outline the white boxes that are painted in front of dugouts.

We're almost ready to begin colouring the outfield grass, but just finish off the grass around home plate, and once done there, outline the outfield with a thick tipped green marker, so this can be our border.

Here we will get to the last step on our field itself. using a ruler for those straight lines, you want to color the entire outfield going straight the direction home plate faces. After you have the entire field like that, begin with the slanted lines and do the entire field one way, and then do it going back the other way until you have a real MLB look. This is sometimes the most confusing part of the whole project, and it's important to take your time, as even I messed up here, if you can spot it. But, now we are finally done the entire field process and it's now time to work on the grandstands.

This part is pretty self explanatory, just use your giant piece of foam board, and trace the outline of the field on to the board, then poke tiny holes with the pencil so the glue can have a sort of anchor to it, then spread the glue and lay the paper down, sitting a book on top of it overnight.

One of the most important parts in a stadium is the seating, and we want to figure out exactly where that will go, so copy the lines I have in the picture above. Because the side of our field is not straight, but wavy, we need to have the bottom level of stands all come out to a certain point, so the rest of the stands farther on will be easier to make.

Now we are moving on to cutting out the structure of our stands. The pictures above show what shape we are looking to have, and the dimensions are on the second picture. Cut out as many of these as needed, I would recommend about 40 or 50, as you want to go as far as you drew on the board.

Just a quick break from the stands, we want to make sure that our dugout area does not get covered up by the seating structure, so draw two boxes like this on either side, just behind those white boxes painted on the field. We will cut our cardboard structure to go around these.

Now we will glue down the structure, following our drawing plan on the board. You will need to mark the cardboard pieces where they need to be cut so they will fit in the lines we drew, keep in mind that each one will probably be a different size. This may be a painfully slow part for you, but it will greatly help to have everything straight for later.

Here you want to make sure you cut the cardboard short enough to go around the dugout boxes on both sides.

Here we have the final layout of the bottom deck of seating. I followed my drawing to get the shape I wanted, and you can see we have the straight edge for when we do the next two levels.

This step here is one of the hardest to explain using text, so try to follow along as best as you can. You want to draw a shape like the one above, or a shape that will fit a section of your stands. You need to leave the small white strip on one side, as this will be the walkway between seats. Then, using your marker and a ruler, do the horizontal lines, trying to keep them as straight as possible. Once finished, you should have visible distinction between each line, giving it the look of rows of seating. This is the most time consuming part of the project, so try not to get discouraged.

Basically we will just continue like this, gluing down, measuring for a new one, cutting it out, and then starting all over again. Make sure to make them a bit bigger than you need them tho be, because they can always be cut.

Now we can put in the dugouts, so just take a piece of black paper, fold it in half, and glue it in an upside down L shape inside where you went around the box. Then, just continue coloring and gluing the seating down on top.

We have now completed the bottom level of seating, and our edges will be straight now. Next, on to the left field stands.

From now on, my steps might get a little less words in them, because you should know pretty well what to do. Here we start on our left field stands, and I designed these as to look like their own separate building, and the main stadium wont be connected to it. The stand supports have a heavy slant to them, and I just used the same seat coloring and gluing method.

Next, we will start on the main part of the stadium, where most of the fans will be grouped. You can cut out any shape you want for the supports, but the picture above will show what I chose to do. You will need many of these, as we want them to be tightly grouped together for the best results.

Next, glue all the supports you need, and they should ring your field like in the pictures above. Late on you will see that I removed the top roof section on the supports, and added a different style later on.

Now I added in the second level of seating, and made this section red, a nice contrast to all the blue, and it also goes with my plan for the team colors. This part was relatively fast, because I was able to do the straight sides with one giant long piece of paper. This is still the same method with the ruler for the straight rows. I also added in stands with a nice light blue color along the edge of right field. The advertisement board will stand behind here.

Now that we have the entire field ringed with stands, which should have about a 1 centimeter tall edge to the field,we can add in the walls around the field. I used the same ruler method and about 4 strips of paper to go around the entire field. Make sure to cut it so it stops around the dugouts.

We are now on the top and final level of seating, and I think the park is starting to come together quite nicely. I did the same color of red again, and it took about the same amount of time as the last level, completed in about an hour. we are now about three quarters of the way finished.

Here we begin the roofing process, and here, you just need to trust the process, because it does end up looking great.

I cut out all these rectangles of cardboard, which were about 1 cm tall, and 2 cm long. Glue these on top of each support that we glued on earlier. These should be on each support all around the park.

Now I cut strips of normal white printer paper and cut it to the height of the cardboard and then glued it on to form the height between the roof and the stands. I also glued these to the left field stands, though a roof will not go on there.

Next I used strips of white paper again, cutting them certain lengths to fit on top of the supports, just to make everything look nicer.

Now we can cut out pieces of cardboard like in the pictures shown above, and I just used a permanent marker to turn them black. These will be the parts that give the roof its slant. You need enough to go all the way around again, but notice I excluded the left field stands, because the videoboard will go on top of there.

Now we will actually put the roof on. I used black card stock paper, and similar to how the white paper was put on, it was all two inches in height, then I just cut it to go around the stadium, and it goes together seamlessly.

Your roof should now look something like this, and I think this part really helped bring it all together and gave it a retro look too.

Now to cover up the edges of the cardboard supports that protrude into the field, we can cut long strips of paper and glue them on, this helps make the field look nicer inside, and the contrast with the red blue and white looks really good.

Now we need to cover up the cardboard supports on the outside, so it doesn't resemble a skeleton as much. I used the black card stock paper again, and used about 4 strips to cover the bottom edge, next we will finish the top part.

I printed off a paper with these boxes in it, I can leave the PDF at the bottom, and I colored in all the boxes with sharpie, then the same as the bottom half, cut strips and glued them on. I added the red card stock just to add some color, as the outside was looking a little dull. The stadium by my standards is complete now, but I want to add some more detail to bring out the MLB in it.

I printed out a bunch of logos that looked like they would sponsor a team, and even designed a new logo on Canva, for another Canadian team, which I think we totally need, and I glued these onto a piece of painted cardboard, then attached it behind the right field stands. I got a picture of a pitcher printed out too, and stuck that on for a video replay board, and this got attached to the left field stands. The final one was a sign with the name of the field on it, Chevrolet Park, which sits behind center field.

Now I used strips of black card stock to cover up the last cardboard still visible. This was just using the same method as the roof, cutting to get the right angles. Next is our final part of the whole project.

This part is optional, but it turned out way better than I thought it would, giving the whole build a more realistic look. I bought a 3 foot long USB strip light from the dollar store, and I glued it onto the little black slant pieces so the light was going out over the field. The lights have numerous settings, but the white light really brought everything to life, and it looks amazing in the dark.

And with that, we were finally done. This build took me two months in total, but I only spent about $10 on making it. This would make a really great decoration for your sports memorabilia room, and even with this tutorial as a sort of test, you could try to make ones of real stadiums in the world. I hope you had fun reading this, or even better, building it.