Diresta made a box in the most awesome and duh way possible. He put it all together all sides on one box and then cut the entire thing out on his table saw. Oooh that was a good idea. Now it will fit perfectly! Except my 'table saw' isn't exactly straight so the box isn't square but that's ok this time around. 
I started out with this, the wood is 1/4" so too thin for screws or nails. I used wood glue. Next up is to age the box. For that I crumpled up tissue paper and glued it, let it dry and then sanded the entire thing.
Next I spray painted it black, let it dry and then stained it with a cherry mahogany stain. I did many coats of it so it would look like old leather.
The black keeps it dark and the wrinkles show off the stain. Since this was the first one I made a lot of mistakes which I will show here so others don't make the same. I sectioned it up for the goodies.
I wanted leather straps around the whole thing but didn't want it to come unglued so I criss-crossed it with linen yarn. To make that work I took out the panels and drilled holes on either side of the 2 leather straps. There was some sanding after the drilling. But this is what the inside looks like. Yeah I should have done this in a different order. I stained the yarn too.
Now it needs hinges and I was too lazy/cheap to buy some hinges and I had more leather so why not use it. This caused some problems with the inside needing to be sanded again. Drill your holes first!
And I did a handle the same way, I had to sand even more. Doh! Ok onto the inside. I added some explorer toys and some plastic bugs. There's even a book that says 'Field Notes' on the front.
He liked it, the kids liked it, there was fighting to look at it. It was the most popular gift until the Magic 8 Ball was unwrapped.
Not my greatest woodworking but it did the job. I think I can do more. I just need to make my table saw survivable now.
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