Matchbox Miniature Vintage Suitcase

So, I made this, if I may say so myself, awesome looking matchbox suitcase. It turned out better than I expected to be honest. I based myself off of this tiny tutorial, but wanted the suitcase to have a more leather look than the slightly wooden look the one in the tutorial had. I mean if I'm gonna spend an hour making a tiny matchbox suitcase, it better be the best darn suitcase I can make, right? :p
I made this for one of my best friends who is leaving for an Erasmus in Helsinki for a semester fairly soon, so I made this suitcase Finland-Belgium themed with the travel 'stickers' I put on there.
So far I've also made a tiny student codex* and tiny sash from our days together in a student union/society**. If any of you have any suggestions as to what other tiny things I can put in, please let me know! I have no inspiration any more right now... :(
I made another video tutorial for this one, so check that out first and then you can follow the detailed instructions I'll give below.

40-60 minutes

Needed

- Thin Brown Paper (like from a paper bag, mine was from Primark)
- White paper and dark brown marker or Dark brown paper

- Matchbox (or you can make one out of card stock)

- Glue

- Scissors

- Ruler

- Optional: Silver/Gold marker/ink

- Optional: Tissue paper
- Optional: printer or white paper and markers 

- Optional: card stock

Instructions

- Cut two strips of the brown paper, big enough to cover the outer part and inner part of your matchbox twice.

- To make it seem like leather: Wet it slightly, crumple it tightly a few times and flatten it out. Put Brown marker all over a part of your tissue paper and dab it on the brown paper to give it a 'vintage' / battered effect, if you have stamp for this, even better. Repeat the 'colouring the tissue paper and dabbing the paper' as much as you want for desired effect. Flatten paper with a heavy weight (big book) and let dry.

- Make markings on your faux leather strips on where the corners and edges of the inner and outer pieces of matchbox go and fold over all the edges.

- Put glue all over the outer and inner matchbox pieces and glue on faux leather.

- Put a layer of glue on top of that to give it even more of a leather look. If your paper become too see-through (and you see the design of the matchbox underneath) because of the glue, put a second layer of the faux leather on and cover that layer with glue again.

- Let both pieces dry for the most part, a bit sticky still isn't a problem.

- Cut out 6 circles out of the dark brown paper (or white paper and colour them dark brown). The

diameter of these will depend on the size of your matchbox. They should be large enough to be noticeable but small enough that their diameter is smaller than the thickness of your matchbox (so your corners don't overlap at the sides like mine did, do better than me and measure before you cut/glue!). Also cut two long strips of dark brown which will make up the 'straps' going around the suitcase, and one short strip which will make the handle.

- Cut 4 of the circles in half and the other 2 in quarters. Cut a point at one end of both long strips and on both ends of the short strip.

- Glue the 8 half circles over every corner of the outer matchbox and the 8 quarter circles to all corners of the inner matchbox. In my case because I used a lot of glue in this part as well, some of my brown marker from the corners spread onto the suitcase, which actually improved the battered look, so feel free to use lots of glue, especially if you used dark coloured corners instead of corner made out of coloured paper. Afterwards I did go over the corner again with my marker so that these got a bit of their dark colour back.

- Glue both straps over the suitcase with the pointy edge on top about halfway on the front of the suitcase. Glue handle on top of the suitcase. Again feel free to use quite a bit of glue. Because it's so sticky and you're touching the suitcase all over, some of the brown paper 'detaches' in tiny amount, which gives it a textured look, if you can see that from the photos. You definitely see it in the video.

- Optional: Draw on buckles with gold/silver marker as well as 2 dots at the ends of the handle (as pins holding it down). And if you want 2 dots over straps on top of suitcase (again as pins) and 4 dots on bottom of suitcase (as pins to stand on, I didn't do this). Since I didn't have a marker, I used gold nail polish with a q-tip and pencil, which was fine for the dots, but my buckles turned out kind off ugly, so I wouldn't do them unless you have a marker.

- Optional: Add on 'travel' stickers from various destinations, the original tutorial has these lovely printouts you can use. I had to look up ones for Belgium and Finland (which were hard to find) and my printer wasn't working so I just attempted to make them myself with some with paper and markers (didn't turn out awesome, but it's really small, so who cares? :p). I made 4: Leuven, Belgium, Helsinki and Finland.

- Optional: I reinforced the inside of my matchbox with an extra piece of card stock, because the cardboard had become slightly weaker because of the glue (which became better as it dried completely, but I had already added the reinforcement and it couldn't hurt).

- When completely dry: put matchbox back together, might be a little tough at first since they're a bit thicker now, but just use a bit of force. Opening and closing will go smoother the more you do it.

- Fill with whatever you want! So far I've got the codex and sash as you can see.

I also made a bigger version of this out of a carton box (from a macaroon make set I got for Christmas) I had lying around. I made that one really quickly and fumbled a lot with it, so it didn't turn out as well as the little one, but it'll do. I'm planning on filling the big one with cookies to give alongside the little one, so it'll probably won't be kept for long, so it matters less. I had less patience with this one, so I didn't wait for the faux leather to dry and it tore a bit while I was glue it on wet, and the glue itself didn't work as well with wet paper either. I used some leftover white reflective paper (from the front of a note pad- for the corners and straps and realized too late they brown markers wouldn't work well on it. And then my first marker gave in at the start of colouring the corners, and the second nearing the end. So none of them are covered well anyway. The dark marker turned purplish on the reflective paper for some reason. And on top of all that I didn't have enough glue to use the 'cover with glue' method I used with the little on. Buuut, despite all that, it still looks alright, especially for just a throw-away gift box, at least I think so... What about you? ^^ If you also want to make a big version I would recommend not making my mistakes, and also make sure you can still open the box after you cover it in your brown paper.

Tiny codex and sash compared to their bigger originals.

*Codex: In Belgium student societies organize events called cantus, where we sing traditional songs and drink delicious Belgian beer with quite a few rules and Latin phrases thrown in. These songs are bundled in a book called a 'codex'. Another tradition is to leave little texts in each other codices as good memories.
**Student Union: Here each faculty has a student union which is responsible for student representation, organising events for their students and the sale of course books. My friend and I were both presidium members, and we had a sash which held our union's shield, our name and our 'seats'.