A Tutorial and An Accomplishment

Hello, fellow bloggers, crafters, and readers!  Let's get a few things out of the way first.  This is not a crafting blog.  I've been into crafting my whole life, but only got into the blogosphere of crafting about a month ago.  This is the only tutorial on this blog (so far!).  Just wanted to say that first!

I was thrilled to take part in Craftaholics Anonymous's Handmade Gift Exchange this month.

I was given a craft partner, Ryann.  We live across the country from each other!  I live in NC and she lives in CA!  We exchanged just a couple of introductory e-mails.  What I got from her was that she's married, has 2 cats, likes board games and video games.  She works for Mad Catz, so duh.  I knew I wanted to do something with the board game aspect, but for the first two weeks of the exchange period (the deadline for the exchange to happen in June 30), I really struggled with what to do.  Then, about a week ago, it hit me.

I made her a personalized board game!  It's perfect!  Here is a picture of the finished product:

Included: game board, playing cards, die, player pieces, and instructions.

It looks like a lot, but not only did I already have most of the stuff I needed, the project was really cheap to do.  The entire craft cost less than $5.  The only expense I had was construction paper ($1 at the dollar store) and a rounded corner punch from AC Moore ($4 on sale!).

Wanna know how I made it?  Here we go!

First, you will need:

• cardboard
• construction paper
• scissors
• glue
• Mod Podge
• markers/Sharpies
• a ruler/paper cutter
• something to represent playing pieces

I cut some cardboard to an unknown size (I had used the cardboard previously for a hot glue gun rest and just cut off the end of the cardboard that had glue on it still).  Then I 'Podged some blue scrapbook paper onto it.

Next, I went about cutting the small square spaces.  First, I held the ruler at the left side of the construction paper and made a line to represent the width of the ruler.

 I continued down the paper until I had several ruler-wide lines.  I cut up the lines and then pulled the same stunt along the smaller strips.

When I cut the ruler-width lines the second time, I ended up with squares.

I used 4 different colors that I liked from the pad of construction paper that I bought, but feel free to use as many colors as you like!

Then I just began gluing them on the board.

I didn't know how I wanted to board to look, I just started gluing.  I only put a little blob of glue under each square because I 'Podged the whole board at the end and it held everything down and sealed it.

 Once that was done, I started working on the playing cards.  The cards were the most tedious part.  Call me old-fashioned, but I hand wrote every one!  No MS Word for this girl!

To make the cards, first I folded the construction paper in half and creased it at the top.  I lined up the ruler with the crease and made a line down the middle of the paper.

see the crease?

I cut the paper up the line I just made and then had two halves.  I put them together long-ways and made a mark at the 3 and the 6 on the ruler.

I lined up the ruler with the marks, made lines and cut accordingly.

I was able to get 6 playing cards out of each piece of paper.  I needed 18 cards per color, because it ended up that there were 9 squares of each color on the board.  I made the game for two people, so to ensure that each person met each square at least once, I got 18.  I needed 3 sheets of each color to get all 18 cards.

I cut the rest of the paper and then set out to write them.

I gave each color a "category," or something that was relevant to her life.  I ended up with red, pink, orange and yellow.  Red represents World of Warcraft, pink represents love/engagement/marriage, orange represent cats, and yellow represents gaming.

I made a list of each category and listed 9 "good" and 9 "bad" things about each topic.  The good things moved up the board and the bad either moved back or back to the beginning.

the Cats category

Each card had a witty title, a description based on what I wrote on my list, and instructions for game play regarding how to move on the board, up or down.  Once the cards were done (3 days of work, btw), all that was left to do was Mod Podge the board.

I also took the liberty of drawing in borders for the playing cards, although it wasn't part of the original plan to do so.

While the board was drying, I wrote up some little instructions explaining game play and congratulating my craft buddy on the arrival of their personalized board game.

For the playing pieces, I found some glass vase stones I had laying around and picked two of them.  We found the die in a board game that we're never going to play.  I called the game "Life of Ryann," because it's about her life and also because who doesn't love a Monty Python reference?

And that's it!

Again, here is the final product:

So there you have it!

There is your tutorial for how to make a personalized board game, and the accomplishment is that I actually stuck a big craft out and finished it!  Yay, me!

Thank you, everyone.  If you have any questions, please feel free to leave them in the comments section!