Mini DIY Dr. Who Tardis Model

Hi there! How many of you are getting ready for Father’s Day already?  I know…I know it isn’t even Mother’s Day yet but this year is a special Father’s Day for us.  Our oldest son is going to be a dad for the first time.  He and his wife are expecting at the beginning of June and we are over the moon.  This month’s StyleTechCraft post is about Father’s Day gifts so Jeff and I decided to combine our creative-ness and make a mini DIY Tardis model from the Dr. Who show for Ian.  

 

 

DIY Mini Dr. Who Tardis Model

There are many Dr. Who Tardis products on Amazon. You can find anything from trash cans that have sound and light up to keychains and back packs. These items are fun for the nerds and geeks who love Dr. Who.  In our family we have all liked the show for a long time so we are a family of nerds.  LOL.  

This post is sponsored by StyleTechCraft, the vinyl company that supplied the beautiful blue and silver polished metal vinyl for this project.  They have provided me with this vinyl but all of the opinions are 100% my own.  

Our mission this month was to use the polished metal vinyl on a Father’s Day or Man Cave project. This vinyl turned out to the be the perfect product to decorate our Tardis.

But before we could add the finishing vinyl touches we had to build it.  And when I say we…I mean Jeff.  This was basically his project so I have to give him all of the credit. 

Creating The Parts

This post contains affiliate links for your convenience.  You can ready my full disclosure here!

The boys and I gave Jeff a 3D printer for Christmas.  Once he got it built and put together he has been printing ever since.  He is a draftsman and loves to design and create his own project parts to print and build.  For the Tardis model he printed a bottom, a top part and a lid.

This is the bottom or base of the Tardis.  He even added a first Father’s Day message to make it more special.  This took around 16 hours to print.  The size is 4″ x 4″

 

 

These are for the top of the Tardis and the lid.

 

 

There are two more small pieces shown below that will go onto the lid as a sort of handle.

 

 

These fit together as shown in the photo below.  Altogether the printed pieces took around 36 hours of print time.  

 

 

Creating The Sides Of The Tardis Model

The four sides were cut out of PVC smooth ceiling tile from Menards.  For a 2′ x 2′ square it is $5.98.  Jeff is really good at looking around for materials that cost less but do a great job for different things.  He cut the pieces with a radial alarm saw but thinks it could be scored and snapped to size if you didn’t own a saw. 

 

 

Then he fit them into the groove of the printed base piece and numbered the sides as to how they fit best so he could fit it back together.

 

 

The the top “ring” piece (only it is square) fit on the top to hold the pieces in place.

 

 

He added some pieces to the sides to cover the joints of the pvc tiles.   This just finished it off a bit.

 

 

This is how it looked with the lid.

 

 

Adding Some Paint

Now it was ready for painting.  We purchased some Gloss Black spray paint from  Rustoleum and he sprayed the outside and the lid.  He wanted to leave the inside white so he masked off the inside using painters tape.  The Tardis is blue but we liked the black paint and wanted the blue vinyl to stand out.  We call this “artistic license”  LOL!

 

 

 

 

Adding The Vinyl 

We knew we needed a series of rectangles and squares for the sides and some triangle-ish pieces for the lid.  Jeff is a draftsman by trade and a used to build architectural models for a living so he knows his way around Auto CAD.  He designed all of the pieces and made a DXF file to use in the Silhouette software.  Here are the screen shots of the cuts we made.

 

 

This vinyl was so great.  It cut and weeded so perfectly.  It was similar to the glossy and matte pieces that I love working with.  We had absolutely no problems with it at all.  First we cut the blue side pieces.  This blue is called Royal Blue Polished Metal

Look how pretty it is.

 

 

Next came the silver window pieces.  We used the Silver Polished Metal for this.

 

 

I used transfer tape for all of these pieces to apply them perfectly onto the sides of the Tardis model.

 

 

We also added some blue pieces to the lid that you will see in the final photos below.

The Finishing Details

The only thing left to do at this point was to add the signs.  The iconic “police box” sign at the top and the public telephone sign on one side.  

We wanted to make the top signs with the vinyl but the text was so small and my blade isn’t new so they didn’t cut very good.  So, I used my Photoshop Elements program and we printed them on cardstock.  It worked out well and the whole project turned out so nice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ian will love it, we hope.  I think he will keep it on his desk and use it for pens, pencils or whatever.  It really is just a little container.  I hope you like it too.  We know that not everyone owns a 3D printer but the base and lid and could be made from wood or if you found a tall square container already made it would be easy to paint and decorate to look like the Tardis.  

It was fun to make and we can’t wait to give it to him.

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Michelle