Saturday, January 22, 2011

TARDIS Matchbox

I recently was "strong armed" by the awesome Pinkleo into participating in the Matchbox Swap Round 4.  My partner spidermom is a big Doctor Who fan, and had lots of TARDIS themed items on her Wist.  Since they are both rectangular, I thought the TARDIS would be a great choice for the matchbox I was going to build her.   I used an online template from Swap Bot for the box itself.  (Though the PDF wouldn't really open for me.  I had to take a screen capture of it, and size it up.)

After coming up with the right sized box, I found blueprint images of the TARDIS online, and cut down the front and tweaked proportions till it fit the size of the box front.  Then just cut and pasted together in Photoshop.  I printed it, along with the manual cover on the only sheet of blue card stock I had.  Thank goodness it worked the first time!  The printed lines were all gone over with superfine Sharpie, and the upper windows were cut out and backed with vellum. The doorknob is a little metallic scrapbooking embellishment.

Matchbox, with all it's goodies packed inside:

When the tray is empty, you always have the Doctor to keep you company.

All the goodies unpacked, including a resin bottle cap pendant, AB beads, a bone bead, tiny TARDIS Instruction Manual, two keys to the TARDIS, a paper tag, pin back, clip, blue buttons and beads, blue acrylic drops, a copper and brass ring, stamp from China, evil eye bead for protection, star charms, hematite beads, hook clasp, an angel wing charm, 60's-esque teapot, leather "Travel" tag, s-hook clasp, and a cookie fortune.

Detail of the necklace.  I made a ton of these charms in the Steampunk Charm Swap, and have been meaning to make necklaces out of them ever since.  For those of you who are curious, I believe it's a Leinenkugel's Fireside Nutbrown Ale cap.
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You can't be flying about time and space without any idea how to operate the crazy box, so I made a tiny TARDIS Instruction Manual

Inside of the Manual

Possibly my favorite find from my stash, the fortune:

I should probably note that when I came up with this idea, I had never seen an episode of Doctor Who before.  I chose most of my bits & bobs just by going for items that related to traveling, and the same shade of blue as the TARDIS.  Since I finished the box and mailed it a week ago, I started to get curious though.  In the last week I ended up finishing Series 1, and just started Series 2 this morning.  While David Tennant is adorable, and I'm sure will grow on me soon, I already really miss Chris Eccleston who I was nursing a bit of a crush on.

*Edit: I have since learned to love and adore David Tennant who will always be "My Doctor".