DIY Gag Gift for Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Fan

Hello Internet!

A friend of mine from my current place of employment was going through a rough time over the past couple of weeks with his mother passing away. He took 2 weeks of Bereavement and PTO time off, and while he was out, I thought it'd be nice to make some sort of gag gift gift to try and brighten up his day when he had to come back to work.

My buddy is a huge fan of the book and early radio series "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". On May 25th he even tried to have our company co-sponsor a company Towel day to commemorate one of the main points in the book about a towel being the most useful item a space wanderer could have with them. To riff off of that, I decided to make a fake emergency box with an extra towel in it so that my coworker always has an extra towel at his workstation (to go with the towel he already has)!

Step 1: Materials and Build Process

I kept this gift as simple and inexpensive as I could, though you could make it look more authentic with a little more TLC if you'd like.

-For the Emergency Box, I found a white shadow box from Hobby Lobby for about $12. Link here. On the hobby lobby site, it's priced at 24.99, but at the specific store I went to, they had 50% off all display cases and shadow boxes! You could also make your own with some thin pinewood and white paint, but I was going for simplicity.

-For the actual towel, I tossed around a few ideas for colors and designs. I wanted something that would look like it came from a hospital, so I settled for stark white with a little knit design so that you could tell there was a towel inside the box. Since the shadow box is fairly thin, I just picked up a white hand towel from Target. The towel color is "True White", link here.

-For the lettering, I also looked around for a couple of different options. I actually tested cutting out a stencil of the letters and spray painting on a test piece of glass (sadly no pictures of that). This had disastrous results though, and I settled for some stick on letters from (once more) hobby lobby. Link here.

That's it, all done! My buddy from work comes back tomorrow morning, so I'm hoping he enjoys this! I'll post pictures of him with it if he does! Either way, he'll be all set for more outer space adventures!