Make Your Own Path Tile Game from Mat Board and Markers

I first published this tutorial on Crafting a Green World.

A path tile game is a great introductory DIY board game, with tons of opportunities for creativity and infinite playability.

Tbh, I love making board and card games even more than I love playing them–and I love playing games! I really love taking a traditional game concept that’s been around forever, like chess or the Royal Game of Ur, and reskinning it with my own design, although I also have a lot of fun modifying more modern games for my own personal use; check out the Cards Against Mythology game that I made with my Girl Scout troop!

I particularly love the open-ended playability of path tile games. I love that depending on the design, the path you follow could be a highway or a water-filled pipe or a route through a cave system, and I love that you can make an all-new game just by changing the shape of the tile or the number of paths per tile. You can make up your own rules for your game, you can change the rules every time, or you can have no rules at all and just enjoy the process of building an intricate and ever-changing maze.

For this particular game, I decided that I wanted to make it for my four-year-old niece, so I wanted it to be fairly simple in shape and number of paths, and otherwise as open-ended as possible. I chose four bright colors for the paths, but otherwise kept the game un-themed so she could feel free to make up her own rules, enjoy the process of maze-building without gameifying it, or even incorporate the pieces into her own small-world play.

That means that this tutorial is for a square path tile game with four paths per square but no other theming or embellishments. Feel free to change the tile shape, number of paths, or anything else about your own game!

Materials

To make my simple version of the path tile game, you will need:

• stiff chipboard, cardboard, or mat board. I used mat board for this project because I have plenty in my stash and I’m pretty stoked about using it up. Mat board definitely made for a wonderfully sturdy game, took marker like a champ, didn’t need to be sealed, and is so easy to source that adding new tiles won’t be a problem–as long as I remember what color markers I used, lol! If you’re looking for a quick and easy game to experiment with, drawing on the blank sides of cardboard food packaging would work perfectly well. If you’re looking for something heirloom quality, you could upgrade to wood-burned and watercolor-stained wood tiles.
• measuring and cutting tools. Your tools will vary depending on your materials, but I measured with a clear plastic quilting ruler and a gridded cutting mat, and cut with a guillotine paper cutter and a craft knife.
• embellishing tools. For this project, I used a mechanical pencil to measure and draw the paths, then four colors of Prismacolor marker to color them in and a black Flair pen to outline them.

Step 1: Measure and cut your tiles and mark your paths.

The first decisions you need to make consist of what shape and size you want your tiles to be and how many paths you want per tile. If you don’t want each tile to have a top and bottom, then they need to have rotational symmetry in both shape and path endings per side. For the path endings, I accomplished this by measuring and cutting a set of 50 2″x2″ tiles, then marking paths that began 3/16th of an inch from each corner and were each 3/16th of an inch wide. There’s then a 1/4″ gap between paths on each side.

It’s tedious work to go ahead and mark every path ending on every tile, but you’ll thank yourself for it later.

Step 2: Draw out the paths.

The next decision to make is what you want your paths to look like. I have eight path endings per tile, which means that I’ll have four paths per tile. These paths can look however you want, shaped however you want. Do you want angles to fit a robot theme? Scallopy edges because your playing pieces will be boats on the water? Do you want to insert a couple of dead ends or u-turns or other tricky traffic signs? You can do anything you want!

My family of four worked together to create our 50 tiles, and I like that you can see a stylistic difference between our tiles. I liked smooth lines and curves that matched, but another family member liked a lot of wavy lines and crazy curves, and another family member even added some loop-de-loops to their paths. The game was meant to be a handmade gift that was clearly from all of us, so in this case the stylistic differences were a feature, not a bug. If you want an overall more cohesive aesthetic, decide that from the beginning.

Mat board doesn’t erase particularly well, so make yourself a few extra practice path tiles if you really don’t want any faint pencil lines or eraser marks to show while you’re figuring out exactly how you want your paths to look.

Step 3: Color the paths.

This is my favorite part of the process!

You can choose any number of colors for your paths, but I decided on four colors that would each be represented by one path on each tile. You could make your paths all the same color, or a different color for every path throughout the entire game, but I really like the impossible prospect of trying to match path colors when I play–it’s randomly satisfying, for all that you can never perfectly match every color.

Carefully color in the paths, then outline the edges in black pen.

Step 4: Play!

This is such a fun game to play, with rules that are unlimited only by your imagination–if they exist at all! Add a couple of wooden game pieces that you’ve liberated from another board game (for this game, we spray painted DnD minifigs solid colors to match the paths), then decide if you want to try to run each other off the playing field, or if you battle when you meet on a path, or if touching orange moves you back to the beginning and loses you 100 points, or if you all have to try to get to a specific spot.

To store the game, build a box out of that same mat board, or repurpose another storage container. I really like this clear acrylic one that I rehomed from a bathroom drawer because it shows off the pretty colors of the game.

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Make a Giant Upcycled Cardboard Minecraft Grass Block

 

This is an old tutorial that I recently realized that I've never shared here before! I originally published it in Crafting a Green World way back in 2017.

Why, yes, this IS an oddly specific tutorial that I’m writing here. But what can I say? If you know a kid, do me a favor and try this: leave the computer and go ask that kid if she’d like to have a giant Minecraft grass block all of her own. I’ll wait right here, because trust me–you’ll be back, and you’ll be making this, too, and here’s how you’ll do it:

1. Score some cube-shaped cardboard boxes. This is the trickiest part of the project, because most cardboard boxes aren’t perfect cubes. You can cut down a larger cardboard box, but I volunteer weekly at a food pantry, and what I did was simply keep my eagle eyes out for the perfect type of box. One day, we got in a pallet-full of I Heart Keenwah snacks, and the boxes that those snack packs come in are perfect cubes! Tape the box closed, and you’re all set!

2. Download Minecraft grass block skin vectors. Google it, Baby! You want to find vector images so that you can size them up and down and the image will stay proportionate. My I Heart Keenwah boxes were 8 inches square, and using vector images allowed me to maintain the correct sizing of the pixels that make up the block.

You will need a top, bottom, and side image for the grass block. If you’re going to use the block as a party invitation, like we’re doing, then put the party info on the top. Resize the vector images so that they just fit on the sides of the box.

3. Print the images onto used paper. Use the back sides of paper that you’ve already used once. 

4. Cut the images to size. A guillotine paper cutter is the best and quickest way to get smooth cuts.

5. Adhere the images to the box. You know how a cube goes together, right? Four sides, a top, and a bottom are what you’ll need, and don’t forget that the sides also have a top and bottom–grass above, dirt below. Use your favorite glue or double-sided tape to attach the images to the box.

6. Is it a party? Put the party invitation on top. My partner is a graphic designer, so he redid the vector for the top of the Minecraft grass block to include the details of the party invitation. You can get the same effect by simply gluing the invitation on top, or putting it into a pocket on the side of the block.

You could actually mail these invitation, although our particular plan is to doorbell ditch them on friends’ front porches. My kiddo spent so much time playing with the blocks before they were delivered, however, that we’re considering making another set to play with at the party, and for her to keep.

P.P.S. Want to know how that long-ago party went? Here it is!

P.P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

How to Clean and Refinish Antique Door Hardware

This tutorial was originally posted over at Crafting a Green World.

My house is… well, let’s call it “well-loved.” Door hardware aside, the house as a whole is wonky and inconvenient, quirky in a way that modern houses just aren’t, and whatever its quirks, I generally either genuinely like them or politely ignore them.

I do get curious about some things, though, and the four antique mortise locks on the four doors in the original part of my house are among those curiosity-inspiring objects. Although their keys are long gone, their keyholes are delightfully Victorian, but all the exposed pieces, plus the equally interesting door hinges, are covered in several thick layers of sloppily-applied paint. I don’t have any kind of yearning to restore my wonky old house to its original condition, but it would be pretty cool to clean and refurbish just those antique door fixtures, just to see what they actually look like…

So that’s what I did!

Step 1: Make sure you’re not going to get lead poisoning. 

Lead poisoning is not worth playing with, so my first step before messing with ANYTHING old, from thrift store dishes to the awesome windows I found by the side of the road last fall, is to check it with a lead swab. These came out lead-free, although I tested again every time I uncovered a new layer of paint.

Sooo… these fixtures look awful. Once you realize that I’ve been living in my house for approximately 8 years and never before so much as blinked an eye at the pitiful state of these pieces, you’ll understand how house-proud I apparently am NOT.

Step 1: Remove the fixtures from the door. 

For me, this involved muscling through five layers of paint to even get to the screw heads, and then muscling against those layers of paint to unscrew each screw. Fortunately, just a quick spray of WD-40 was all it took to get each rusty, painted-over screw turning.

You don’t need the water to be THIS soapy. I just like bubbles!

Step 2: Remove the paint. 

There are a few methods for removing paint from old hardware, but the easiest, most eco-friendly way is simply to grab a beat-up old crock pot and boil the snot out of everything. I did this out on my back deck one sunny afternoon. Set the crock pot to low, add a squirt (or fifteen squirts, in my case…) of dish soap, and walk away. A few hours later, you can fish each piece out with tongs, set it on a piece of clean newspaper, and peel away the paint or gently scrape it off. If any paint still seems stuck, put the piece back in the crock pot for another couple of hours.

When you’re finished, your piece won’t look pretty, but it WILL look paint-free!

Step 3: Get distracted and therefore make more work for yourself. 

You’re supposed to thoroughly dry each piece after scraping all the paint off. But… I don’t know. One kid might have needed help factoring a polynomial, or the other kid might have wanted me to drive her to pick up holds at the library, or maybe a friend texted me, or heck, maybe I saw a squirrel. Who knows? Whatever happened to interrupt me after paint scraping but before thorough drying, it resulted in me eventually wandering back by the deck and noticing that all of my nice door hardware that I had spent all that time cleaning off had rust ALL over it.

Pro tip: Your cleaned pieces will rust VERY quickly if not dried thoroughly!

Step 4: Remove rust from the door hardware. 

If your piece doesn’t have any paint on it, but it’s dirty and rusty, you can start here. Or if you’re like me, and you have the attention span of a gerbil, continue here! Fortunately, removing a thin layer of rust is SUPER simple. I put my metal pieces in a shallow dish, covered them with vinegar, and let them sit for a couple more hours on my deck.

After a couple of hours, I took the pieces inside and used a soft cloth and cool running water to rub away the residue and rinse off the vinegar.

THEN I DRIED EACH PIECE THOROUGHLY.

Step 5: Polish the hardware. 

Your end result isn’t going to be a gorgeous, like-new piece of door hardware. I mean, fifty years ago someone first painted over that piece for a reason, right? So I was a little disappointed, sure, but not too terribly surprised that my clean, rust-free, paint-free door hardware shows a lot of wear. The pieces are also brass-plated, not solid brass, and the brass plating has worn away in several spots.

You actually CAN re-plate antique pieces, but I’m not going to. Instead, I polished each piece with #0000 steel wool. You’ll find this in your local hardware store with the sandpaper, not with the cleaning supplies, because this is fine steel wool for polishing, not scrubbing.

Step 6 (optional): Repair and restore. 

after I had cleaned and polished the pieces, I was actually able to see a manufacturer’s stamp on the hinges that were previously completely covered with paint and crud. That particular stamp was only used between 1920 and 1934, so I’m pretty stoked!

Unfortunately, I can’t find any specific information on my mortise locks, although I do hope to restore those to functionality. Here’s a site that sells parts for several varieties of antique locks, and another site that sells skeleton keys that, while they aren’t guaranteed to work on any particular lock, aren’t so spendy that they’re not worth gambling on.

Step 7 (optional): Seal the hardware.

I did not seal my door hardware, because I’m willing to live with it a while first. My area doesn’t get terribly humid, and I’m curious to see how the hardware will fare without being sealed. If its condition starts to deteriorate, I have no problem with the extra steps of popping it back off the door, cleaning the rust off (again), and sealing it.

However, if you want to ensure that the pieces that you worked so hard on stay as nice and shiny as they look right this second, you can coat them with any sealant that works on metal. None of your options are particularly eco-friendly, but if it keeps an antique piece out of the waste stream and allows you to get by without buying new hardware, it’s a net good.

The final result isn’t door hardware that looks brand-new, but it IS door hardware that looks clean, feels authentic, and is much, much, MUCH preferable to what it looked like before!

Now I just have to scrape those same five layers of paint off of the door, too…

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

How to Make Quilted Greeting Cards

I originally published this tutorial over at Crafting a Green World.

Quilted greeting cards are a great way to show off your cutest mini quilt blocks!

When I made quilted postcards, we all knew that I was just one small step away from making quilted greeting cards, right? I mean sure, there was a chance that I’d get bored with mini quilt blocks and move onto the bookshelf quilt that I promised my younger daughter, but you and I both know that when I start down a rabbit trail, I generally follow that trail to the absolute end.

It turns out that the end of the mini quilt block rabbit trail is a set of quilt-as-you-go rainbow quilted greeting cards!

These quilted greeting cards have a whopping two additional steps over my quilted postcards, so they’re still a terrifically quick and easy way to do some scrap-busting of your sewing stash. You should also already either have a mini quilt block in mind OR know how to do the quilt-as-you-go method.

Here’s everything that you’ll need to make quilted greeting cards:

• fabric for quilting as you go or mini quilt block. Fabrics that are approximately all the same weight work best for this project, but otherwise, feel free to play with whatever fun fabrics you’ve got on hand. Those white suns on my mini rainbow quilts are pieces of my old wedding dress!
• double-sided fusible interfacing. This will allow you to adhere your mini quilts to your greeting cards without stitching onto the card. You can do without it, but I think it makes the final product look the nicest.
• heavyweight cardstock. Regular cardstock doesn’t feel hefty enough in the finished product, considering how much weight the mini quilt adds to the front of the card. I actually really like this Strathmore watercolor paper for this project, and I think you could even go as heavy as bristol board or cardboard food packaging.
• measuring, cutting, folding, and sewing materials. I used a guillotine paper cutter, a spoon instead of a bone folder, and regular sewing supplies.

Step 1: Measure, cut, and fold the greeting cards.

To make a standard 5″x7″ greeting card, you’ll want your paper sized to 7″x10″. I actually folded my watercolor paper in half first, then cut it to size with my paper cutter. I’ve got some nice scraps leftover for making bookmarks and gift tags!

No matter whether you fold first or cut first, the most important part of making a homemade greeting card look really nice is getting a really nice fold. With paper as thick as this, you pretty much have to use some kind of tool to smooth down that fold. The concept of the bone folder grosses me out even though I know most of them are just plastic, so fortunately the back of a spoon works just as well!

Step 2: Sew a mini quilt block sized to your greeting card.

I had the idea for this quilt-as-you-go rainbow and sun block, so in these photos that’s what I’m sewing, using that ‘Merica fabric as my base. I generally snap up 100% quilting cotton whenever I’m out thrifting, even if I hate the print, just for projects like this. I’ll also take all your old 100% cotton blue jeans!

By the time I finished my rainbow, you can’t see ‘Merica at all!

Edge-stitch around your completed quilt block, even though fraying isn’t going to be a problem. Your block also doesn’t need to be quilted, strictly speaking, so quilt it or not as you like. I quilted some of mine and left others alone, and I still can’t figure out which I like better.

Your appliques are another place where you can play fast and loose. I just zigzagged my suns onto the quilt blocks and called it good!

Step 3: Attach the quilt block to the greeting card front.

Cut the interfacing to size, then make a sandwich with the greeting card face-up, the interfacing, and the quilt block face-up.

Iron the snot out of your sandwich! Or, rather, follow the interfacing manufacturer’s instructions for how to iron it, ahem.

I ironed the snot out of it, though…

Trim any bits of the quilt block that are sticking out past the greeting card. If any bits of greeting card are sticking out past the quilt block you’re going to be soooo tempted to trim that, too, but trust me: that way madness lies. You will NEVER get it even, so just set your mind firmly to not noticing any sticky-outy card bits.

In case you’re thinking that now I’m SURELY done with mini quilt blocks, I’ve had the idea that maybe I could figure out a way to only temporarily attach, say, a mini quilt block coaster or mug rug to the front of a greeting card, so that the recipient could pull it off and use it. That would be super cute, right?

Move-in day. I HAVE to have that bookshelf quilt finished by my kid’s college move-in day!

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How to Make Quilted Postcards

 I originally published this tutorial on Crafting a Green World.

Quilted postcards are a fun way to let someone know you’re thinking about them.

The scrap busting is a bonus!

It is apparently my Summer of Quilting Tiny Things, as I have quilted so many wee pretties so far! Completely ignoring the Foundation Paper Pieced quilt I promised my high school graduate for her college dorm bed, I’ve instead been busily sewing up little quilt-as-you-go bookmarks and zipper pouches and applique patches and these adorable postcards.

Quilted postcards have been my particular favorite lately, because they make such great gifts for so many occasions. I’ve made lots for the high school graduates in my life, but these would be a good gift for their parents, too. You can make themed and pre-stamped postcards for anyone planning a fun trip or heading off to sleepaway camp, and what better way to wrap up a visit to long-distance friends and family than with a lovely hostess gift of postcards that match their style?

You can turn most mini quilt blocks into a postcard, or alter almost any mini quilt block to be postcard-sized, as you prefer. Here’s how!

Materials

To make quilted postcards, you will need:

• cardstock, cut to size. Postcards must be rectangular, not square. They can be anywhere from 3.5″ to 4.25″ along their short sides, and 5″ to 6″ along their long sides. Any cardstock of approximately 65 lbs will work, or you can upcycle cardstock or thin cardboard food packaging. Be VERY careful with the latter, though, because your postcard can only be .016″ thick, maximum, and that’s with the fabric and interfacing and stitching!
• fabric scraps. My favorite thing about mini quilts is using up my teeniest bits of fabric scraps. Frankly, I’m going to have to get started on my kid’s Foundation Paper Pieced quilt soon just because otherwise I’m about to run out of teeny fabric scraps for mini quilt-making!
• fusible interfacing. I know that normally all I do is gripe about fusible interfacing and how it’s just an extra thing to buy and an extra bit of polyester in the landfill, but you DO need it for this project. Lightweight interfacing, or any scraps of any weight (as long as you don’t go over the maximum postcard thickness!), will be fine.
• measuring, cutting, and sewing supplies. My universal needle worked well for this project from start to finish. If you’ve got a super-new needle in your machine, though, you could switch it out for an old one when you actually start stitching over the cardboard.

Step 1: Pick your postcard size and cut the cardstock and interfacing to match.

I actually started off with 4″x6″ pieces of cardstock leftover from a previous project, so I trimmed about .25″ from the long sides because I was paranoid about any stitching or extra fabrics making my postcards slightly too long. Postage is expensive enough without paying for an oversized piece!

Whatever size you choose for your postcard, cut interfacing to the same size. I used my cardstock postcard I’d just measured and cut as the template for this.

Step 2: Sew mini quilt blocks to match the postcard measurements.

There are so many great ways to do this!

The photo above is of a quilt-as-you-go mini quilt block, which you can stitch directly onto the non-glue side of the interfacing that you cut.

For all the other quilt blocks I’m writing about, we’ll save the interfacing for the next step.

The photo above is a postage stamp quilt. To make this one, cut 1.5″ squares from your scraps, then piece them with a .25″ seam. If you want to make your postage stamp quilt SUPER tiny, cut 1″ squares but keep the .25″ seam allowance, and your finished quilt block will have eensy little .5″ pieces.

The postcard above is a log cabin mini quilt block. Piece it exactly the way you would a log cabin quilt block, again with fabric scraps that are 1″ to 1.5″ wide. I added extra pieces along the side to fill out the length.

The quilt block above is a triangle hexie. After finishing the hexie, I filled out the corners by piecing it with more log cabin strips, then trimming the block to size. I can use those scraps in another quilt-as-you-go mini quilt project!

Step 3: Add interfacing and stitch the quilt block to the postcard.

Unless you made the quilt-as-you-go quilt block and therefore already have the interfacing attached to the quilt block, fuse the interfacing to the back of the block now. This will add stiffness to the block to make it easier to sew, and it gives the postcard a little more support, as well. But you could probably skip the interfacing, too–if you try that, let me know how it worked!

After the interfacing is attached, do any quilting that you want to the block. Technically it doesn’t really need it, but it IS pretty!

Place your postcard and the cardstock wrong sides together, and clip in place–I finally splurged on a set of plastic clips a year or so ago, and I LOVE them. The fact that they’re plastic is a huge bummer, for sure, but I just have to commit to taking care of them so they never end up in a landfill on my watch.

If you wanted to change out to a junk needle in your sewing machine, do it now. Set your stitch length to around a 2 and your stitch width to at least a 3.

Sew around the perimeter of the postcard. I don’t try to catch the edge in the stitching or anything–I just keep the stitching near the edge.

Finally, trim any excess fabric from around the cardstock.

To use this postcard, add a stamp to the top right corner of the cardstock, then the address on the right side. Write your message on the left side, and pop it into the mail! You’re about to be USPS famous!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, dog-walking mishaps, confrontations with gross men, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!