Dreidels!

[ailaG]

Is this the right forum to post these?

Last Hannukah (Dec 2011) some of my Whovian friends wanted to watch the Christmas special together. I had just moved near a dollar store, which turned out to be good for my creativity because I stock up on all sorts of materials without thinking twice.
They had raw wooden dreidels.

And so an idea was born...

The full gallery can be viewed at http://dreidels.are-cool.net
Interesting enough, when I finished them I realised I had made 11 (numbered) so the 11th even has a small bowtie drawn with a pen on it.



My friends' reactions? There were SCREAMS at that party.


The paint is acrylic.
I cut small pieces of tape (transparent office tape) to cover the areas the windows would be in, which, if you ever do this, is very risky - you'd need to estimate sizes and distances at a very high accuracy. If it's off by 1mm - it shows. If it's crooked it will probably look more sloppy than cute.
I also taped the area for the police box instructions sign, so that the blue won't darken its background. The sign is just plain 80g paper printed with a regular printer, anything fancier wouldn't make a difference.
After painting everything but the "bulb", when the paint was dry, I peeled off the tape and drew the window bars.

I originally planned to print the "POLICE BOX" head signs but it made the dreidels look too detailed and I wanted to stick with the plain theme and leave more empty space. For the same reason I only used one colour and the plain native colour of the dreidel.

The windows are far from being proportional. In a regular TARDIS the windows' height is probably less than 1/4th of the box's height. If I had done that here, they would be too tiny. (The dreidels are very small. The tiles I lay them on for the photos are 20cm x 20cm) Plus, the proportion of height to width is different so I had to do a cartoony variation on the original TARDIS proportions.
I don't do plastic art much, but I draw, so I took inspiration from a trick for drawing cartoons or children - the head is bigger in proportion to the rest of the body. While your head's height is around 1/7th of your entire height, a child's can be 1/5th and a cartoon can go up to 1/3rd, sometimes more. So the windows' height is around 1/3rd of the imaginary door area.

Check out the annotated photos in the link, too.



And when you spin them, it's like they're going through the vortex.

[domvar]

What is a Dreidel? Good work on the paint jobs.

[ailaG]

Spinning top. It's a toy for Hannukah, a Jewish holiday.

It usually looks like the one in the middle here:

with letters on each side, and children play games where they spin it, and then perform tasks depending on which letter the dreidel lands on, or they try to finish singing a holiday song before the dreidel drops.

Spinning a (TARDIS) dreidel:

Thanks for the compliment

[Mark]

Very creative ailaG.

If I'm honest I thought they were lollipops when I saw the little picture on the home page as I didn't know what a Dreidel was!

Happy belated Hannukah by the way.

[DoctorWho8]

The Dreidel song from South Park is in my head now.
Bill "the Doctor" Rudloff

[ailaG]

TARDIS lollipops that are sweeter on the inside are actually a pretty good idea..

(BTW, the song from SouthPark is what they sing in English-speaking countries. "Dreidel dreidel dreidel, I made you out of clay..". I ought to make a DW filk from a Hannuka holiday song for when I spin that dreidel..)

[cardborduser]

I NEED TO DO THIS FOR HANUKAH 

[ailaG]

Need any help?
I used plain wooden dreidels which are sold in small stores in Israel before Hannukah. I don't know where you can find them in the States but you can probably order them. Art / hobby shops maybe?
I thought about selling them but I probably won't have time until Hannukah and shipping takes 2-3 weeks anyway. I can send you plain ones if you cover the costs but they may not make it in time either.

If you're in the UK by any chance (your profile says US) I'm there soon, can help out, get you plain ones or whatever. Let me know.

[cardborduser]

I'm going to look at the Israeli stores in my area,  and if i don't find any, i think i'm going to use some old wooden dreidels that i have since you can no longer see the letters on them.