Last year, my husband and I started playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons on the Nintendo Switch. This was influenced by a co-worker of mine, and then our other co-worker joined the fun as well.
The game is very simple, which is probably why it became a national obsession this year; that and the Covid lockdown with lots of time on everyone's hands. The game is so easy to play that your grandma could do it. Basically, you move onto an Island of your choosing, build your house floor by floor, and fill the island with flowers and trees and residents and homes, and a museum, general store, etc.
So, for Christmas, it was only fitting to gift my fellow obsessives with AC (Animal Crossing) themed gifts.
As long as I can remember, my mother has given my siblings and me little Whitman's Samplers for just about every holiday. I always save the boxes with the intent to create little dioramas of them, and this was the perfect occasion.
I had my husband print with his Elegoo Mars 3D resin printer, two beloved characters from Animal Crossing; the sibling owls, Blathers and Celeste.
Blathers is the Director of the Island Museum and part of your daily tasks is to dig up "fossils" buried throughout the island and donate them to said museum. So, I printed Blathers and one of his fossils and placed them in the museum entrance, where he greets you.
Celeste, Blather's lil' sis, only shows up randomly on the island, and when she does you might just see shooting stars that night and find "star fragments" on the beach the next day.
We found the 3D print files for Blathers, Celeste, and the fossil on thingiverse and my husband designed the star fragment, which is now also on available to download on thingiverse.
For the backgrounds I took pictures of my game screen and then printed them out on shipping label stickers to stick into the boxes. I then used gold rub 'n buff to paint the edges of the boxes for a nice finish.
Thank you for visiting!
🦉🦉