Labyrinth Scene Box (2009)

This is one of the cool things I made and something I'd like to make more of someday, but with different themes.
It's a "scene box". A box that you have to open in a certain way, guiding you through all kind of scenes from a movie.

The finished box, approximately 22,6 cm x 22,6 cm x 22,6 cm

At first sight it looks nothing different then some kind of cube, resembling the Companion Cube from a video game. But if you look at this sketch you might think otherwise.

Step 1: Closed box.
Step 2: Slide backside off.
Step 3: Flip top lid up.
Step 4: Slide out the sides.
Step 5: Click off the front side.
Step 6: Open the doors.

The "ordinary, nothing special"-box can transform, flipping up, sliding out, open etc.

This particular Labyrinth themed box was made for a friend who is a big fan of the movie.

It starts with a big pile of pieces: 

All pieces were drawn first in a 3D object, so I could calculate the needed sizes of every part.

Next to wood I also used some engraved plastic parts, which I engraved at my job at Railz Miniworld. I used AutoCAD to trace the lines of original pictures and converted it to a file which the CNC grinder uses.

These pieces had faces of all kind of characters who would pass by in the movie.

My favorite character from Labyrinth:
Sir Didymus
The white plastic was rubbed in black paint
then dry painted with silver.

All 7 engraved pieces: Sir Didymus, Ello-worm, Hoggle,
Sarah, The Card Figures, Jareth and Ludo

All pieces were sanded, prime painted and added with the color they needed. I used a dark red color and covered it with black stains. For that I used a fumbled piece of newspaper which was dipped in black paint.

The corner pieces were painted gold.

Colored side plates.

Colored corner pieces

When it was dry I could glue the engraved emblems inside the holes.

4 plates with their emblems. The worm and Didymus were places inside.

After painting everything was put together. It was quite difficult to do, since the thickness of the wood together with the paint were slightly different than the ones that were calculated, leading to some extra sanding. Also wasn't it the most easy project to glue together, because there wasn't much to hold on too, due to the moving parts.

None the less it worked, making this the end result:

Step 1: Closed box.

Step 2: Slide backside off.
It revealed the curious goblins, from the bedroom scene.

Step 3: Flip the top lid up.
It reveals the ballroom "Cinderella"-scene.
In the scene the bubble was broken to go back to  her real life.
Later on this "bubble" has to be "broken" to get to a key.

Step 4: Slide the sides out.
This reveals 2 scenes.
1: The Labyrinth at which the "Ello"-worm lives. (his emblem is in the left wall)
2: "The Bog of eternal stench" where they had to skip stones and met Sir Didymus (his emblem is in right wall)
The scenes are printed from the movie (or a good resembling picture from Google) and glued onto the wood.

Step 5: Click off the front side.
It's attached with  a magnet. It reveals a Firey; it are creatures that  take their heads off to play around with it.
I used double sided tape for this effect.

When the front is removed it leads to a door, which is also seen in the movie.
The shape on the lock is the same as a pendant Jareth has around his neck.

The other side of the doors. They contain pictures of the annoying door knockers .

Step 6: Open the doors.

 The door leads to the final room. 
It's the Escher like room, with steps and doorways at the walls, ceiling, floor etc.
Inside is Jareth the Goblin King about who the story goes. He has a crystal ball he plays with 
(Contact juggling it is called; I learned a few tricks after seeing Jareth's ball-skills.)

This is how it looks when all the pieces are opened, flipped, removed and/or slid out.

My Little Pony Wind Spinner (2009)

Next to all the fantasy related items I am also capable of making completely different themes things.
Like this My Little Pony Wind Spinner, which I made for a little girls birthday:

When the wind blows the my little ponies spin around.

I started out with some sketches, to figure out the size. Then I calculated and designed my own gears for this project. I wanted to make them rounder to fit the kiddy theme.
For the body I used my drawings and used cut out parts as a template so I could transfer them to wood.

After some sawing and gluing the body of the spinner was ready:

The wooden body before using a Dremel to grind lines in the "feather" tail.

The My Little Ponies were drawn on scale on a piece of paper, which was glued on a piece of wood.
Then they were sawn out using a fretsaw. The paper was sanded off and the lines were drawn back after a white primer was applied. Then is was a small painting job to make them look like the actual MLP's.

5 MLP's to go on the spinner. Don't ask me for their names. I took the example from stickers.

Next to the ponies, it was also time to paint the body. I used white spirit based paint, because it's an outside project.

This means every color needs at least a day to dry.

The colored body.

After painting the parts could be put together and the gears had to be aligned properly otherwise the spinner wouldn't spinn.

A detailed shot of the home made gears.

As you can see I also added some plastic rhinestones to make it more appealing for a little girl.

Another important part were the wings of the spinner. I made 6 pieces in 3 colors, matching the themed colors; white, purple and pink.
The wings were made from crafting foam.

The paper template for the wings.

Glue the bottom parts first, then glue the top parts together.

As a finishing touch add a circular shape, to cover up the glue line of the last wings.

I put the whole spinner on a stick of +/- one meter. I painted it white, then added some tape diagonally around it. The remaining white was painted deep pink. After that the tape was removed, making it look like a candy-cane.
Between the body and spinning disc a bearing is placed to prevent friction as much as possible. None the less it still needs quite some wind to spin, because it's made from wood instead of plastic.

 When everything is put together, this was the finishing product: 

There is also a testing video which was made to check if it would spin in the wind. It did, but there wasn't enough steady wind, that day, to keep it spinning. Therefor I made another video where I held it in font of a fan on full speed.
Resulting in this out of control video:

Note that it looks quite wobbly, but it wasn't lined out and glued tight yet.

Dollhouse Jukebox (2009)

 This is one of the coolest dollhouse projects I made this far.
It's a miniature jukebox.

The friend for which I made the torture devices for her dollhouse was part of an online group. At that group we had an online story. In that story we had a "magical" jukebox (thanks to me).
It would play random songs which were related to the actions going on, on that particular moment in the story.
For example: Someone wrote about her character making the same mistake twice. Then the jukebox would be playing "Oops, I did it again" from Britney Spears in that same story.
Because the setting was kinda dark and it was about werewolves, vampire and other night creatures, this jukebox got a bit of a dark look.

I started with a simple AutoCAD drawing, giving me some guidance about it's size.
Then I got my hands on a small mp3 speakerset (cost about 10 euro's). Offcourse I took it apart shortly after:

Now I knew the exact sizes I had to work with and I made the chest part of the jukebox.

It consisted of a front, back (with a door for the batteries, a hole for the on/off switch and a hole to plug an mp3 player into), 2 side parts (with holes for the speaker) and an arch for the top.

That arch was made by gluing +/- 3 U shaped pieces together.

The pieces of the chest. It still lacks the bottom and legs.
Note that the big U shape is used at the front.

 Everything is glued together and I used veneer from school to give the MDF wood a massive wooden structure.

The sides glued together and a small adding of veneer at the top.

After the chest was finished it was time to add the electronics:

Sideview of the speaker.

At the window I put the red led light from the
speakerset. It lights up when the speaker is turned on.

Offcourse I wouldn't be me, if I didn't add a bit too much detail to it.

So I added a few tiny CD's

I can't remember or see which I added to be honest. I know there is a CD of Kiss because my friend is fan of them. And I added a CD of Limp Bizkit. If I'm correct there is also a CD of Army of Lovers, Cher, Abba and Rick Asley. Since I used the worst of the worst types of CD's.

In The Netherlands we call them "Foute Muziek" (trans: Wrong Music). It's music you should, in normal circumstances, be ashamed singing them out loud even though everybody knows the lyrics. But at "Foute Parties" you should be ashamed not to sing with them.

The ring of CD's next to a 5 cent coin to show how small it is.

Top side. The ring goes around the LED light.

 For the speakers I made these gridded covers. And I used very tiny pieces of paper to make the list of songs. It was too tiny to add actual song names on them.

Speaker cover

Detailed view of the window.

To show how it all works I made this short video: