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Marie's Crafts
Marie's Craft Corner
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Turn cardboard inserts into summer board games!
If you start looking for them, you’ll notice cardboard inserts everywhere from delivery boxes to take-out food bags. These flat, rectangular shapes are perfect to transform into board games. The types of colors, decorations, and game pieces you choose— even the rules of the games you create—are all up to you. Use the two examples shown here as inspiration to make designs of your own!
What you’ll need: Cardboard inserts, construction paper, stickers, scissors, a glue stick, and a ruler and pencil if you want to measure or mark anything before gluing it down.
Choose the sizes and shapes you
want to start with. Will your game board be large or small? Square or rectangular? The size and shape of the cardboard can determine what type of game you decide to make. I chose one smaller 5 x 8-inch piece of cardboard and one larger 10 x 12-inch piece.
Cover the top of the cardboard. Cutting and pasting construction paper is the easiest way to cover the surface of your cardboard. For my smaller game I lay the cardboard on top of a piece of construction paper, traced around the edge, and cut out a single shape that I glued in place. For my larger design, I measured two-inch squares and glued each down individually to create a type of checker board. In both cases, I picked bright, summery colors.
Add decorations to create your
game. For my smaller design, I made a winding path across the board using a combination of neon office supply stickers and playful emoji stickers. Maybe with the roll of the dice, players have to imitate the expression of the emoji they land on. My larger game became a type of checker board, although not with the traditional amount of squares on each side, which is perfectly fine since we can be the inventors of the games!
Pick out your game pieces and start
playing! Game pieces can be anything you like, from construction paper circles to craft pom-poms to pebbles or seashells found on the beach. How will players advance? Maybe they’ll roll dice, or tell the funniest joke, or be the first to solve a math problem. The best part of this craft is that you can make it up from start to finish. When you’re done, slip your board and game pieces into a tote bag and bring them with you to the park or beach or to a friend’s house. Have fun!
by Marie Hueston
