Been a while since I last built a Ghibli Minituart papercraft. This time, I'll be tackling a one star Laputa one model number 19 so it should be quicker. Then again, the first Totoro one was a one star but it still took many hours to put together so wasn't expecting this to be any easier although it did look simpler.

There are quite a few other harder Laputa models such as the actual castle in the sky but it only looked good in the cover photo. The actual model wasn't very good when I saw the models in Loft.

So first thing will be the guardian robot since he's the biggest and just happens to be first on the instructions too. Doesn't seem too bad, eh?

Not quite when see all these tiny pieces that needs to be cut out...

And fully glued together. Toughest part was probably the little flower because of its size just like the Kiki model. Very hard to get the right amount of glue on. Bits of green grass can come later.

Tough part is probably adding colour to these tiny parts that make up Pazu and Shita. The instructions advised you added colour to these parts before gluing them and they are so tiny, I'd imagine it would be hard even with a 0.5mm pen to add colour... Since the card was coloured, my markers didn't really add any colour on the darker card so I just left them as is. You'd probably need chalk or something to add colour.

Be sure to use some of the spare card as a mask.

Lots of pieces making up Pazu together... He's probably the most time consuming with his layers of clothes and bags.

Now for Shita which doesn't have as many pieces since she doesn't carry any bags.

Unlike the previous Totoro model where the human characters where just made up of one piece, assembling the characters here was like putting on wigs and clothes separately here, lol.

Background wall isn't hard to cut out since they're all large pieces mostly.

Now the fun part. Adding the green powder to create the grass... It's not too bad since all you have to do for the grass is spread glue over the card, pour some of the powder on it and spread out gently. Just don't sneeze or inhale, lol...

Better have a wet tissue nearby or use gloves since it can get quite messy.

The bushy green's tougher as with the Totoro model since a lot of it falls back off and what made it harder this time is once you have all the pieces in place, it's hard to carefully glue the green sponge into place. So, I decided to glue all the vertical pieces pointing outwards first - the pillars. I put some sponge on them then I slid the larger pieces into place with glue pre-spread.

Didn't workout too bad although I had to add a second layer of glue over the grass after the first layer dried a bit so that it's more abundant. The grass made up a large part of this model unlike the Totoro model so I didn't want it to feel too sparsely populated. With the glue I used it kind spreading a second layer meant pulling some of the old powder off but just spread as usual.

It's supposed to be a peaceful place overgrown with vegetation after all.

Here's a screenshot from the movie.

Aaand the finished model!

Looks better than the cover photo! In the end it took around 7 hours to make but who cares about time when it looks awesome? ^^