Every year for Wonderfest, there’s a group build challenge. This year the task was to go to one of the dollar stores, spend $20 max on parts, then make something out of it.
On my first trip, I spotted an almost-disk-shaped clear Christmas ornament, grabbed it, then walked around until I spotted a pencil sharpener. The two together gave me Star Trek vibes, so I ran with that. It was a couple of months until I found suitable “engines”, which are some sort of travel vacuum tube/bottles for makeup. At this point I’m less than $10 spent.
Other than the dollar store finds, I’m using two clear domes that I had in the “cool shapes” bin, a contact lens container, and some clear resin rhinestones that are self-adhesive. I’m sticking those anywhere the hull looks too plain, or where I want to indicate laser emplacements, navigation lights, sensor pods, etc. To attach the dish to the body, and the engines to the body, I drew and printed appropriate looking connectors.
I’m basing this on some of the ships at the Starfleet Museum website. They have a lot of cool, retro Trek designs that depict ships from the 22nd century up through the original Star Trek series.
This will be the UES Hoboken, because it’s where I live, and because I looked up to see if any Trek ships had been named Hoboken, only to discover that not only have no Trek ships carried the moniker, but no real-world ships have, either.
Two weeks left to finish this. As you can see, it’s all primed and the base coat of my “starship gray” has been applied. Now to cut stencils for portholes, registry, name, etc.