What you see below is a cardboard mockup that my daughter, Tracey made. What is it for you ask? Well i'ts not a birdhouse, even though it looks like one. This will be a 'keepsake' box shaped like a house or cabin. Let me explain: Tracey and her sister Angela recently went to a 'Taylor Swift' concert and they both had a great time. One of the things that her fans do is trade bracelets that a lot of people make. Now these bracelets are one of a kind, hand made pieces that get traded between other people that made bracelets of their own.

Now I didn't know this was even a 'thing',  trading bracelets, but apparently it is.

Taylor Swift was performing in front of a prop that looked very much like this cardboard house, and with some pictures that my daughter took, she had a plan to make one, with my help, so she could store her many, one of a kind, hand made bracelets inside of. And one of Tracey's requests was to use some thin pieces of wood to make it with. In fact, she picked out most of the pieces that I had laying around which made it even easier.

Anyways, this will be a father-daughter project and it should be a really fun time working together.

Here's two of the many bracelets that my daughter received that evening. Oh, one more thing that Taylor Swift fans do, they lay one of their bracelets on top of Taylor's CD's in the store so one of her fans can own one. I didn't know this was a thing either until Tracey told me about it. Go figure!
 

I'm using some 1/8" and 3/16" material for this project but the bottom is about 3/8" thick. And the species of wood is going to vary greatly through-out this project. The bottom is pine, the back and left side are thin plywood, the right side and front are black walnut. There are going to be a few more pieces with even more varieties of wood as well, but I'll talk about that later.

With the thinner wood pieces, screwing or nailing them together wouldn't be easy so I glued everything. If you look close you can see some corner pieces shaped like a triangle that gives me a larger surface area for some glue. The two sticks that are crossed are just helping with the glue-up.
 

I got ahead of myself and forgot to put in the windows before I glued on the back so I'm doing it the hard way. I had to build-up the inside with some blocks so I could clamp on something solid. It wasn't a big deal but I did have to cut a few pieces to make them fit.

Now if your wondering if I could have done this operation without the use a milling machine, the answer is yes. But doing it this way ensures the uniform look and some nice looking corners.
 

The four pieces that are being clamped are adding to the actual look that my daughter was after. The outer pieces are black walnut and the two in the center are zebra wood. If you're wondering why the zebra wood looks funny it's because Tracey wanted these pieces to look different so I cut them 1/8" thick like the others. However, the nicer looking pattern is on the thinner 1/8" surface.
 

The next piece is a cross beam that was leftover from a pervious project. I cut two pieces, glued those together, cut it to length, cut a 45 degree on one end and then a 35 degree on the other end. And now I'm gluing that piece in place below.