Maria’s crown is a miniature, Gothic-style golden coronet designed to sit daintily atop the head as a hair accessory. It features a circular base adorned with five elegant, flared points that resemble sharpened fleur-de-lis or ornate cathedral arches. The center peak is the tallest and most decorative, often featuring a small red gem or a circular crest, while the entire piece has a weathered, antique brass finish that gives it a heavy, regal look despite its small size.
What You’ll Need
Any FDM printer with a bed size of at least 160 × 160 mm will fit this model. I sliced it in Orca Slicer but the settings translate directly to Bambu Studio, PrusaSlicer, or Cura.
Filament: ~130–170 g of PLA or PETG depending on your support settings. Metallic gold, silk, or bronze PLA gives the most convincing look straight off the printer with no painting.
Slicer Settings
The crown has many thin decorative elements — walls and shells matter far more than infill here. Strength comes from perimeters, not fill percentage.
Support Strategy
This is the part that trips most people up. The arches and cross create real overhangs — but dumping auto-supports everywhere fills the arch cavities with a mess that’s nearly impossible to clean. The solution is painting your supports manually.
In Orca Slicer or Bambu Studio, use the Support Painter tool and mark only the areas that actually need it — the undersides of the arch bridges and the horizontal arms of the cross. Leave the inner arch cavities unsupported; they bridge cleanly on their own.
Orientation
Print it upright — base flat on the bed, cross pointing up. It feels counterintuitive because of the height, but it’s the correct choice:
Layer lines run horizontally across the arch bridges — strongest orientation, and least visible on the outside faces of the crown.
The base band and ball studs print perfectly flat on the bed with no support needed at all.
On its side looks tempting to reduce height, but the arch openings become vertical and require massive internal supports that are nearly impossible to fully remove without damaging the detail.
Finishing
If you print in silver or “silk” grey PLA, this coronet looks great right off the bed—just take care when removing supports from the delicate fleur-de-lis points. For a professional, high-contrast finish
Remove supports slowly with needle-nose pliers. Work on the cross and arch undersides with patience — snapping a decorative element at this stage is heartbreaking.
Filler primer (optional) — two light coats, cure 24 hours, sand lightly with 400-grit between coats. This dramatically smooths the layer lines on the vertical spikes.
Base coat: Silver or Chrome spray paint. Rust-Oleum Metallic Silver adheres well to PLA with no primer adhesion issues.
Dry-brush the raised edges with a bright “Chrome” silver. Then wash a thinned dark grey or black acrylic into the recesses. The depth this creates is immediate and dramatic, making the silver pop.
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