Nintendo DS Valentine’s Day Box

For the second year in a row, Mason decided to go with a Nintendo-themed Valentine’s Day box for school. Last year, Mason and I made this Nintendo Wii box:

That’s his box on the right, and a real Wii on the left for comparison. Covering a box with white paper turned out to be a pretty good idea, as it lets you fill in all the details with a black marker. All we really had to add was a piece of licorice for a Wiimote strap which, if I remember correctly, had either been pulled off or eaten (probably both) before Mason got to school.

This year Mason wanted to make a Nintendo DS. His first effort (which involved a shoe box and half a roll of masking tape) didn’t look very DS-like, so yesterday Susan wrangled up a couple of boxes for us, and last night Mason and I got to work on his super-sized DS.

We started with two boxes without lids, like a box that cans of soda would come in. We cut slits in the side so the box would fold over on itself, backwards (like Pac-Man). We then cut up the second box and used those parts (and a lot of masking tape) to complete the boxes. The point of all this was, I wanted the “hinge” to be made out of cardboard, not masking tape. When we were finished we had two completely enclosed boxes, connected by a cardboard hinge.

Here’s the box with the first coat of blue spray paint applied. We ended up doing three coats, one gray and two blue. On the left are a couple of print outs from some Pokemon game Mason likes. Our laser printer only prints black and white, so Mason added some color to them with markers. Durign this time he also drew all the necessary DS buttons and cut them out.

Here is the finished box, next to Morgan’s (infamously dead) Nintendo DS for a size comparison. Our DS folds up just like a real one, thanks to the cardboard hinge. As you can see, Mason added all the buttons he wanted. We also added speaker holes to the top half using an awl. The only thing we did after this picture was taken was cut a slot in the front (where the GBA slot is on a real DS) where Valentines go. I’m not sure everything is glued down great, but it only has to last a couple of days.

The only cost involved was the spray paint (of which we now have lots left over), and the longest part of the project was waiting for the paint to dry.