a birthday treasure, part 4

(This is the final installment of a four part series. To read the first post, click here.)

Tablet, ancient chest, Rosetta Stone, Indiana's letter: check! Now to put it all together...

As fun as opening a box filled with sand and a broken tablet would be for any kid (joke), a little extra color never hurt anyone. So I sprinkled in some milk chocolate gold coins, candy coated pebbles and of course, Indiana Jones' favorite: colorful sour snakes. The sand was made up of a combination of cookie crumbs - both sugar and gingerbread, bread crumbs and toasted puffed rice cereal. Lots of puffed rice cereal. The snakes I recoated in sugar so they wouldn't be sticky. There was always a little sand above and below the cookies. I figured the sand could act as a barrier/desiccant. I also added a lip to the base so the crumbs and lid would stay quasi-contained. I did warn his parents that he should open the gift on a table or over a drop cloth. 

Time to pack it up for shipping!

Normally, I love white shipping boxes - they feel so clean. But I'm guessing there weren't any white shipping boxes back when Indiana Jones was around. To be consistent with the theme, I flattened a box and rubber cemented some paper onto the outer white side. This would now serve as the inside of the box. To reconstruct and seal the box, I used this: When I was a kid, this is what we'd use for our packing tape: dried glue-backed paper tape. You'd cut a strip to the length you needed and then draw a damp sponge over the glue to activate it. Good luck finding it anymore. I had to go to an art supply store and buy a huge roll of it. It'll definitely be reappearing in other "vintage" projects!

Since the package was coming all the way from Egypt, well, it couldn't look pristine. I sponged on some tea and rubbed on some coffee grounds all over the paper wrapping. Any area that wasn't smooth got marked up with a brown marker. There's a little chocolate rubbed onto the cord and box as well. Then for the modern world, it was bubble wrapped, air-pillowed and placed in a larger shipping box. His mom just had to hide all that futuristic packing material, for the box to have come from a fellow collector of treasures.

Update on Tuesday, July 17, 2012 at 6:06PM by Mari

I received a very enthusiastic phone call from the entire family minutes after he opened it and puzzled it together. I'd say the 50 or so hours it took to make was 100% worth it.