Mickey Mouse Holding Your Mailbox

A good friend of our family is a huge Mickey fan. The inside of her house, her desk at work, her car, and lots of other things in her life are Mickey themed. The outside of her house didn't have a trace of Mickey. For her birthday we wanted to do something for her that was Mickey, slightly over the top, and she could use everyday.... The Mickey mail box was born. It ended up being just over 5 feet tall, 4-5 in thick, and weighs just over 110 lbs.
I had a bit of help with this project, the art was created by Don, in a black and white sketch. My two girls and my wife lent extra sets of hands when needed, and helped out with some of the painting.

The variations on this are limitless, and our friend has already requested Pluto to hold her paper. I hope this inspires you to create something unique for your mail box and tick off the home owners association. One draw back to a project like this is it will stop traffic on your street, and possibly cause a photo shoot by complete strangers in your front lawn.

Click on the next step and lets get started.

Step 1 Choose your art and adjust for box height

First you will need to decide what art you will use.

Once you find a good piece of art or create one yourself, you will need to see if the height of the box will land within the post offices' regulations:
http://faq.usps.com/eCustomer/iq/usps/request.do?create=kb:USPSFAQ&view%28%29=c[c_usps0916]&varset%28source%29=sourceType:embedded

"Generally, the boxes should be installed with the bottom of the box at a vertical height of between 41-45 inches from the road surface."

I used Photoshop with the guide rules on to determine the height of the box. To do this I scaled my picture size to around 5 in and assumed that 1" on the picture would be 1 foot on the real thing. Don't worry about getting this exact, I will show you how to adjust it to fit when enlarging it to full size.

If your art is black and white like mine was adding color for reference could be helpful

Comments

[scoochmaroo]

This is fantastic! Really well done.