I have no idea how I came up with the idea. When I was in the brainstorming process of The Guiding Compass (yes, that was back in February)  I wrote down how I wanted Tay to be introduced. She was on the side of the road, trying to fix her speeder. When the time came around to take the pictures for Part 15, I knew I had to make the speeder. And that was in the middle of moving.

Originally I had wanted it to be shot on the road by our old house, but I hadn’t finished packing my dolls, and we were moving in several days. I ended up packing all my dolls, and didn’t post any parts of The Guiding Compass for about 3 weeks. After we moved, I unpacked my dolls, and then I was ready to start on Tay’s speeder. Since we had just moved, there was an abundance of cardboard boxes, which I used as the core building material. So, with 2 very flat pieces of cardboard, I began to measure and cut.

The speeder is 12 inches across, the seat is 10 inches. The depth is 3 inches all around, and I’m not sure how long it is.

It was very easy to measure it because I had a mini version of Luke’s landspeeder from the 80’s, that used to belong to my dad as a child. My grandma had kept all of his Star Wars toys (thank you!) at her house, and when we watched the Star Wars movies for the first time, we all were so excited to see the toys. We could finally recognize each piece; they were no longer foreign figures, gadgets, and weird-looking vehicles. My siblings took most of the toys home with them, and I actually have no idea how they survived the move, but they did. So I could just look at the model of Luke’s landspeeder, and measure the doll sized one accordingly. Tay’s speeder is not as long and wide as Luke’s, but I figured since Tay’s is only a one-person-speeder, it should be thinner. ;)

The curved part at the front was a really thin piece of cardboard

So after I cut all the pieces out, I put it together with a glue gun. :)  That part was the easiest.

After it was all assembled, I went on a wild goose chase through the basement looking for our paint, which was still packed up at the time. Samanthalover helped me look and we could only find green, yellow, black and blue – none of the colors I needed. I think God must have blinded me or something, because we had found tempera paint, the kind of paint you should NOT use on cardboard. It wrinkles it. I’m thankful I didn’t find the right colors until much later. My mom and I went to Hobby Lobby and picked up some paintbrushes and acrylic paint, the right kind for cardboard. I used red and several drops of light brown (mixed) for the exterior, light brown for the engines and “that thing that holds up the engine” (LOL), and red with a little black for the red accents. The white/gray part on the sides is white with a few drops of black. Painting took me several days. It dried fairly quickly.

I had no idea what to do for the engines, until I saw a water bottle in our kitchen, and it struck me. So I used water bottles for the engines. I knew they were perfect when they fit exactly in the slot between the top and bottom. *cheers*  First I took off the label stickers, cut off the tops, and then I painted them. That was a little tricky, but not too hard.

After I painted the bottles, I glued them onto the speeder with the glue gun, and then I painted the red accent streaks.

Finally, I painted the white part on the sides, and the slanted part on the seat.

Then I was ready to do the next part of The Guiding Compass!

My little brother helped me hold the reflector for the photos, so I gave him the speeder (since Tay left it on the street) for his turtles.

I bet you are all very startled by that last picture, but I hope you enjoyed this little tour of how I made Tay’s speeder. :)

If you have any questions concerning her speeder, feel free to ask! :)

– American Girl Doll Artist