TARDIS Newsroom – Pick of the Blogs
July 25, 2009

Is there anything more iconic to a Doctor Who fan than The TARDIS?

Oh, maybe. There are striped scarves and Daleks and, of course, Sonic Screwdrivers. But I think the TARDIS is pretty darn cool.

It just so happens that my 11 year old son does, too.

We’re big on painting, decorating and embellishing in our house. My daughter has The Fat Lady on her bedroom door, and has had for years now. My son has been waiting for just the right inspiration to decide what he’d like on his door.

This summer, it came to him. The Doctor’s TARDIS.

This was not a hard project, but it was time consuming between steps. Here’s how we did it!

Project Supplies:

• A large, flat surface, primed and painted some variety of light blue
• Measurements of the door
• graph paper
• pencil
• ruler
• yard stick
• calculator (for those like me that don’t do math in their heads)
• painter’s tape
• navy blue acrylic paint
• white acrylic paint
• 1″ and 2″ white vinyl letters (available at craft stores, mine are from Hobby Lobby)
• off-white paper, printed with the notice (clickable version below)
• Modge Podge or other decoupage sealer

The first step is probably the trickiest. After measuring the door, I taped two pieced of graph paper together and then made a scale replica of the door. Using a photo of the TARDIS, I drew up what was as close as I could come to a scale replica, being the door is tall and narrow.

If you’re feeling really detail oriented, flickr user Star_Cross has blueprints of the real deal.

Our door was already painted light blue, so we moved on to measuring. If your door is not blue, remove the doorknob, prime, paint and let dry overnight before moving on.

Next, we used the yard stick and started measuring. We started by finding the center of the door and working our way out, comparing constantly to our graph paper design (which you can see on the right of the photo).

Once the pencil lines were on, we started taping. I’ll show how we did it and add how I wish we’d done it…

We taped outside the windows and inside the door panels (we should have taped inside ALL the rectangles and painted the whole thing navy blue and then gone back and taped off the windows…it would have been easier!).

Then we painted the inside of the window panels white.

We peeled off the tape around the windows and then started painting the rest of the door navy blue.

Once that was good and dry, we peeled off all the tape. You can see the blue from the original door make nice highlights for the panels.

Next, we penciled in lines for adding the vinyl letters. Even though I’d measured carefully on the graph paper, they’re not quite even. My kid is happy, so I left them!

Next, we used the blue paint pen (we tried a Sharpie maker, believe me, it did NOT work) to draw on the window panes and to add mitered corners around the light blue borders.

The notice was made in Photoshop by taking a TARDIS pic and then enlarging the notice. I then typed over the words, adjusting fonts and sizes until it was right for the size we needed. The is the scale version.

The notice was attached with glue and then smoothed completely down. I used Modge Podge to cover it, being very careful not to smear the ink.

Once the notice was dry, we added the doorknob back and we were done! I do have silver handles to add to make it even more TARDIS-like, but they aren’t pictured.

Sorry about the awkward photo.  The door is at a 45 degree angle to the hallway, which makes it very tricky to photograph!

More awesome TARDIS crafts:

TARDIS Phone Case by myimaginaryboyfriend

TARDIS Birthday Cake by abbietabbie

and my personal favorite, a squashy, plush TARDIS made by young crafter, Miss K

More Doctor Who crafts from sewhooked:

• Dalek Paper Pieced quilt pattern
• Stencil: The Angels Have The Phone Box

Share your Doctor Who crafts on the Doctor Who Crafts flickr group or on the Livejournal Group CraftyTardis

If you make a Sew Awesome Craft or any pattern, craft or recipe from sewhooked, I’d love to see a photo. Email me or add it to the sewhooked flickr group.

also posted on craftster and cut out + keep