Family YAHTZEE

THIS was worth the wait!!!  You’re going to LOVE these!!!

I first got this idea from The Thrifty Chick blog.  I tried and tried to find the link but the blog has since been removed as I learned the author sadly passed away.  You can see the picture of her Yahtzee set HERE.  I had them on my “TO CRAFT list” for quite awhile and when I mentioned what I wanted to do to my great friend Amy Lindstrom she got so excited and inspired me to get going.  I go through all the steps we took briefly here but she was planning on doing a tutorial sometime.  I’ll let you know when it’s up!  UPDATE...***IT'S UP HERE!!!***

These ended up being way more work than I thought.  Mostly because I made 9 sets and she made 10.  SHEESH!  They turned out WAY CUTER than I imagined though so it was worth it.  Everyone that got one LOVED them!!!  Just look how CUTE they turned out!!!

If you are only make one or two sets then I would suggest you just go to a craft store and buy 5 wooden blocks.  If you are making MANY sets then that gets expensive pretty fast.  I had a long list and so did Amy so I headed to the lumber yard and picked up some 2x2 sticks of wood.  Did you know they’re not really that size?  It’s true.  They’re really more like 1.5 x 1.5.  We measured to make sure we cut them into cubes.

The cutting…now that was an adventure!  We busted out my husband’s chop saw and safety goggles and went to work.  The only problem…well, we didn’t know EXACTLY how to use the saw.  I’d seen it used many times and it looked simple enough.  I knew how to be safe with it but just didn’t know how to turn it ON.  Problem?  A little!  ***DISCLAIMER***DO NOT USE POWER TOOLS if you do not know what you are doing!!!  As I was looking all over to figure out where to turn it on I was showing Amy where you hold to bring the blade down and suddenly it turned ON!  Scared the CRAP out of me!!!  Amy snapped a picture of that exact moment as she jumped but I don’t have the picture.  I’m sure it’s lovely though!

Now that I knew how to turn on the saw I knew how to use it.  We CAREFULLY chopped enough to make 19 sets of these Yahtzee sets.  Well...almost carefully.  Don't try and cut the last couple on the stick.  They may fly across the garage.  Just sayin'.

Once they were chopped then it was time to sand them.  OH MY!!!  Sanding almost 100 blocks is EXHAUSTING.  Luckily we had a circular sander.  We still had to split it over a couple days.  Boy were we happy when we made it to the bottom of that pile.

Then came the painting, sanding, staining, paper cutting, corner rounding, modge podging, photo collecting, photo editing, photo formatting, photo printing, photo cutting, more corner rounding, and more modge podging.

Can I just say that I would DIE without Publisher.  I use it for EVERYTHING!!!  It is the most used program on my computer BY FAR!  That's what I used to make all the pictures 1x1 to fit on the sides of the dice and add the numbers.  I all six pictures onto a 4x6 page and sent them off to the photo printer.  5 copies of that picture and I had all I needed.

I didn’t stop there.  I found a bunch of Christmas tins at the thrift store and spray painted them and then modge podged paper and photos on the front.  Some of them also got “JUNIOR”games complete with a scoring board modge podged on the inside of the lid.  To keep score I made little magnets.  I used buttons and modge podged a hole punch circle on the top of it and then glued a magnet on the back.  A magnet that small?  I used the roll of magnet that you can cut to your own size.  It worked great on the tins.    Each set had to have 5 sets of 5 different colors.

The bottom of the tins got one of my family pictures that said “We LOVE you!”  It was an easy way to add my ‘signature’ to the gift.

I made score sheets for each game with their family pics and names on them.  It was fun to come up with the names for each game.  My mom has a wall of family pictures with a sign that says “Leaving a Legacy” so the set I made for my parents was named “Lega-zee”.  I got fun old pictures and then so more current ones.  It turned out so cute!  Have fun creating the names.

Depending on the size of the tin I had to reformat the scoresheet to fit.  Here’s the one I made with my cute family.  Of course ours is the one game that never got a box.  I was DONE!!!  Funny enough it ended up in a tin that says ZOO.  Funny...or fitting?

I told you they were CUTE!!!  Lots of work for 9 sets but TOTALLY worth it!  I made one later with my sister and it wasn't bad at all.  These were LOVED by everyone that got them and totally cheap! 

These are perfect presents for any occasion… birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, happy day presents!  Who wouldn’t love one of these?  Completely unique and personal.