Building a mystery

A few more photos of the object described in the previous post…

…namely, Little E’s Christmas mystery box.

The designs were created out of construction paper, rather than just cranking it all out of the printer – not least of which is because my color ink cartridge has had it and a replacement just isn’t in the budget at the moment, whereas a new stack of construction paper was a buck and change. I cut out rectangles of various sizes that seemed to add up to the question mark, the border angles and the “bolts” in the corners, and then set about aligning these pieces without taping anything down:

This allowed me to identify problem areas and cut out more bits of construction paper. The whole thing was really “play it by ear” – there was no grid or guide to go by, just a gut thing. I had some game stills on my monitor for reference. After rearranging the bits a few times until I had all the pieces needed in the places needed, I started taping stuff down, starting with the drop shadow behind the question mark:

I really should’ve caught the misalignment of the upper right hand “bolt” before sealing it all in, but there ya go. Very, very hand-made.

Finally, I used strips of plastic packing tape to “seal” it down to the box lid (which was open, as I still wanted the box to, well, you know, open).

If I wanted to get really, really technical about it, I could pick the finished project apart on so many levels. The black corner shadow should’ve been flipped over so it was on the bottom and right sides instead of the bottom and left sides. I should’ve caught that one bolt being “off” (I’m not sure why I didn’t – the phone seemed like it was ringing every ten minutes while I was doing this and I probably got distracted). The biggie is that the “POW” side is upside-down from the question mark side! Duh.

The reality of it is that I had limited time to get this done, with other stuff vying for my attention (laundry, dishes, getting dinner started). The end result probably isn’t much more sophisticated than something the little guy himself would put together… but you know, maybe that’s the way it should be. It’s gonna be his box, after all.

Copious pictures of him with his goodies will be taken on the big day. If I’m to be honest, I’ve gotta say that I’m looking forward to this Christmas more than I’ve looked forward to any Christmas since my mother was alive. Mainly because I can’t wait to see the look on his face. I think that’s why my folks used to make my Christmases growing up the get-everything-you-ever-wanted blowouts that they did.