i know how much you guys enjoy making themes for your hamsters cages and sometimes it can
be difficult to find certain pieces to match the theme or maybe they're not usable for the hamster
so i wanted to show you guys how to make your own customized hamster
hideout this here is the gravity falls mystery shack this is one of my favorite cartoons
and this is also a hint into what's my next hamster's name is going to be
so if you've ever watched gravity falls before
feel free to leave your idea on what the name i chose is
so to make your own custom hideout all you really are going to need is
some creativity, a little bit of skill and patience as well as some balsa wood
balsa wood is a crafting wood that is really easy to cut through with an average knife
you don't need any type of giant machinery or giant saws to cut through it and that's what makes
making your own custom hideout so easy
the more harder parts is having to figure out how you are going to make something that is
going to be 3D and usable to start off i pretty much drew everything out on pieces of paper i
cut those out taped them together and figured out how big i wanted my custom hideout to be
once i had my paper model all done i decided to use that as a template to trace onto the balsa
wood so that everything would be exactly the way that i had designed it
the next step would be to cut out all of the balsa pieces that i needed
now balsa wood is pretty soft to cut through but it also does require a little bit of
what's the word i don't know what the word is heavy-handed i don't know
the first method i tried to cutting balsa wood was using the craft exacto knives these
didn't work the best you do need to score the lines multiple times
before cutting through but this just was not working terribly great for me
the next method i did try to use was some scissors
now scissors do work if you don't care what the balsa wood is going to look like after
because the scissors are going to cut through it but the scissors are also going to rip pieces
off so it's going to kind of chip along the back of it which i did not want the third option is a
box cutter now the box cutter i had was from walmart specifically from walmart employee
and it was meant for cutting boxes and this was the best method i had to score a couple of times
and you do need to apply quite a bit of pressure but it eventually does work really really well
once everything was cut out the next step was to sand everything this is important because
we really don't want our hamster to get like a sliver or just like poked somewhere so i
wanted to make sure everything was smooth i started out with some simple sandpaper and
hand sanding it but eventually i um accidentally got a sliver and so i went to get my dremel and
i just used a dremel with some sanding sanding bit and that easily sanded all of the pieces
next we move on to putting the entire house together and this is where i almost did not
continue because it is a little bit difficult to do the method that i decided would work best
was laying out some painters tape i didn't have masking tape so painters tape
and putting the pieces on the painter's tape and then flipping it up to kind of hold them together,
unfortunately, this didn't work the first time and they kind of just all fell off
so i kind of had to take a couple of pieces off and start small
the glue i used to glue everything together is Elmer's glue Elmer's glue
is a really good glue for when you're gluing wood together it holds it really
really sturdy it also is non-toxic so if a hamster chews it, eats it they'll be okay
Elmer's glue doesn't dry instantly like something like hot glue but it does dry
actually fairly quickly and you can usually after about one to two hours move on to the
next step because for the most part it is hard enough dry that you can continue working on it
so i managed to glue everything into a pretty decent and even shape
next i moved on to gluing the roof on and that was fairly easy as well and i just used my painters
tape to hold up a lot of the pieces so that they wouldn't fall down but for the most part it's
actually pretty easy to keep it held up and then i just waited a couple of hours for that to dry
then we move on to the very fun part and that is decorating and painting everything
the first things i did was i did cut out specific pieces from balsa wood to attach
on to the hide which i just attached with some elmer's glue and then put painters tape then i
moved on to painting the hideout and the paint that i used was 100% non-toxic, water-based,
acrylic paint so it is safe incase a hamster does decide to chew on it and ingest any it is
safe for them painting definitely was my most favorite part because that is when it
kind of all comes together i quite honestly thought it was going to come out pretty ugly
before i even started painting it but you kind of have to trust the process and it does get better
the last thing i did because that is what the mystery shack has on it
is some moss and i just added some real 100% moss and this is just glued on with elmer's glue
so in total this is a very cheap and easy way to make your own custom hamster hideout
and it's going to be one of a kind to your hamster
no one else is going to ever have the exact same one and i think that is really really cool
i hope you guys have enjoyed this video and if you do decide to make your own
custom hamster hideout feel free to send me any pictures i'd love to see your guys's designs
and what you come up with so yeah guys i will see you in my next video bye