Here's the Finger Tips Message In A Bottle! If you're not around, just leave it outside your room and if someone's got a message for you, they can simply pop it into the bottle. And as long as no-one else knows how to get the message out it'll remain for your eyes only! If you'd like to make it, you'll need a shoe box lid. Any size will do. Draw around it, twice, onto some thick corrugated card, and cut the resulting two rectangles out. One of the rectangles of card will be the base. As you can see on the finished Top Make, there's room for pens and paper too. And so... ...you need to make some legs for the base so that there's room for the pens and paper to fit inside. The legs are just ordinary, empty matchboxes. Dab plenty of PVA glue on and stick them into place, in each corner. Then paint any colour you like. In the studio we used blue. When the paint is dry, you can stick the shoe box lid onto the legs that you made from matchbox lids. Make sure that it's well stuck down. To give the sides a sandy finish, just paint plenty of PVA glue onto them using a paintbrush... ...and then dip each side into a deep tray of sand... ...to give beautifully sanded sides! Cover three of the sides but leave the fourth free of sand, because this is where the backing scene goes. You can get our backing scene if you click here. Alternatively, you could use one of your own holiday photos, in which case you'll need to enlarge it on the computer or at the developers so that it's roughly the same size as the backboard. If you find you have gaps at either side just make some simple silhouette palm trees by cutting them out of black card or paper. When the backing scene is finished, stick it onto the shoe box lid, like this. Next, fill the shoe box lid with sand. You can add to the beach effect by making palm trees. These are easily made by making two cuts in the length of a sweet tube, using a pair of scissors, like this. Spread out the segments of sweet tube so that they bend in an arc. Then paint brown to get something that looks like this... Leaves are just cut from green paper or card. They're kept in place by the sweet tube lid. And to make the whole thing look really tropical, add some pebbles and shells. If you haven't got any real shells, why not paint some uncooked pasta shells! Then just cut the bottom off an empty, clean plastic drinks bottle and stick it into the sand. Add in some pens, pencils and pieces of paper... ...and you're all set to receive your own messages in a bottle!