As I've said elsewhere, 13 is looking awfully lost on her shelf without her TARDIS:



I know there's possibly a Character Options one coming out later this year, but I don't really want to wait that long.

At first I thought about modifying a 9th/10th Flight Control TARDIS, but it doesn't seem worth the effort if one might get released before I finished it.

And then there's the other problem, I've finally got my hands on a B&M 3rd Doctor TARDIS but have nowhere to put it without rearranging all my shelves, splitting the classic TARDII onto one set of shelves and the new ones onto another ... which I can't be bothered to do at the moment.

So, I got to thinking, what if there was a way to combine both temporary problems? Is it possible to turn this:



into something vaguely like this:



in such a way that it can easily be changed back without any permanent damage.

And the answer is, yeah. Sort of.

Maybe.

The signage is close enough. The colour is close enough. Scale might be out, but I can't help that. I don't want to paint it, I don't want to cut any notches in or tear off and rebuild the roof or lamp. I just want something which looks similar-ish on the shelf for the time being.

My first thought was, could I use this tape:



to cover the base? Maybe if I weathered it with shoe polish?



Yeah, kind of. If you don't look too closely.

It smells a little of shoe polish though. Strange that.

My next thought was, can I change the colour of the window frames with this tape:



To which the answer is, once again, sort of.



If you assume the guy painting the window frames was drunk.

Kind of looks okay in situ though:



As long as you don't get too close:



I'm too tired to carry on tonight, but I think if I drop in a photo of the new interior and maybe add some kind of dome on top of the lamp then it'll do until something proper arrives.

Just to finish this off, I've made a slightly sloped roof out of the same blue tape and a bit of cardboard.



And then added a bit of tape-covered Lego to the lamp.



Which looks terrible. So I tried  different piece.



Which also looks terrible. But then so does the lamp on the actual box, so ... eh.

I also added a tiny piece of silver tape to the phone door and the lock. At which point I started wondering if maybe I should have used the silver tape on the windows? Are they silver? Or grey maybe? Sort of white-ish?

Oh well, too late now.

I spent a few minutes flicking idly through the net looking for a good shot a white interior wall or perhaps the rear of the doors ... before remembering I had my own TARDIS upstairs and just took a photo of that:



Inexpertly photoshopped it onto a still of the interior (taken from the Children in Need video, I think?) to make an interior backdrop:



Which although terrible seemed perfectly serviceable ... until I got it into the box and realised the windows were the wrong size. And height.



But since this was my second attempt and no one's going to see it unless they lie on the floor pressed up against a wardrobe ... yeah, whatever.



It's not pretty, it's not even good, but it'll do the job until the real toy gets released.

If the real toy gets released.

What a great idea! It makes a very serviceable stand-in until they produce an official one.

Our best guess at the moment is that those window frames are aluminium - though not very shiny.