Pac-man Bookends

Video link below, for some reason video link above doesn't work on mobile. I'm new to instructables so I might be doing something wrong.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3o0aVanmPxw

I originally wanted to make these as a gift but my wife and kids liked them so much we decided to keep them. I will probably end up make a few sets the people that have seen them really seem to like them. If you like them and would like to make some for yourself check out the video below.

These are the templates I used to trace on to wood.

I cut out all the shapes with a jigsaw.

I used a disk sander to smooth out the jigsaw cuts. You could do this step with a palm sander but it might take a little longer. I then sanded all the pieces by hand beginning with 80 grit then 150 and finishing with 220 grit.

Here are the pieces all sanded

Here I am mocking up the stand they will sit on. The second picture shows what the stands will look like. They measure 5 inches wide the horizontal bottom piece is 6 inches long the vertical piece is 7 inches long.

In this step I sanded all the edges over to make them rounded I was trying to mimic the look of the arcade game maze.

Here you can see the rounded over edges. I pre-drilled, countersunk and glued the two pieces together.

I primed all the pieces before painting them their final color and sanded them with 320 grit to try and make them extra smooth.

Before I painted the ghost I used the paper template to make individual tape stencils for the eyes. I just eyeballed the placement of the tape to were it looked pretty good.

These pics show some of the painted pieces.

This shows the blue detail around the edge of the stands. Again this is to try and mimic the arcade game maze pieces. I also realized that I had made them crooked. So I had to re-make them except this time I didn't eyeball the right angles I made sure to square up the pieces before gluing and screwing them together.

Tape off the area for the blue pupils on the ghosts. I did cover up the rest of the ghost before painting the pupils.

I drilled a shallow hole in the bottom of the ghosts and Pac-man to add a magnet so that the pieces would sit securely on the stands. I used epoxy to attach the magnets. Then in the base I pre-drilled, countersunk and screwed in some screws for the magnets to attach to. I made sure to make all the magnets and screws flush to the surface I was attaching them too.

I did end up painting the other side of the ghosts with the blue scared face. The process for painting them is the same as the other side just need a paper template to use to cut the masking tape. I used pink paint for the eyes and mouth then masked off the areas and painted them blue.

And here I was just fooling around try to get a few cool pics. I did not succeed but it was fun just moving them around.

And here is the finished piece. I hope this inspires you to make your own. My kids and my wife really liked these. My son likes playing with them like he's playing the game.