My nephews sometimes come over in the summer for a few days during a week and while they are here we often make things.  Sometimes we build boats, robots or masks out of bits of wood and nails.  Sometimes we build cardboard armor and weapons.  Sometimes we paint and sew stuffies.

Last week we built elastic band propelled cars and extending grabbers.

We built the grabbers from broad flat Popsicle sticks and brads, finishing off the grabber heads with painted foam core. They were quite easy to build but the brads would sometime come apart and the expanding scissor action would come apart.

The elastic propelled cars we build from old CDs, juice lids, BBQ skewers, cardboard tubes and small foam shapes as well  as elastics.  Our first attempt failed and we discovered that it was too light.  Our next design had more weight to it and worked great.  Once we had them working, paint and foam stickers were added to make the cars look fabulous.

I broke out the gelli plate the other week and have been madly cutting stencils to create some fun gelli plate printed art.   It is always a joy to use the gelli plate and see what different colours, techniques and materials will work best.  Not every print is a winner but it sure if fun to pull back the paper and see what you get.

I like to add in details with gel or paint pens or use stencils or stamps on top.  I have bins of items I use when I gelli print.  I keep anything that might have a cool pattern or shape.  I make hot glue stencils, buy small wood scrap booking embellishments, carve erasures into stamps with a lino tool, keep bits of packaging material or pieces of nature, or anything else I can think of that might make a neat impression in the gelli.  Block printing ink works best but I have been experimenting mostly with acrylic paint since I have very little block ink.

It's so much fun. 

Welcome to the Insane Game! 

With my niece and nephews in town for a visit we thought we'd make a new version of last summers The Impossible Game. 

Using one sheet of Bristol Board we laid out a basic snakes and ladders style game board and added in all kind of traps and bonuses. We added in a special Wheel of Insanity (a circular track that you have to land on a specific square to get out of as you go round and round), some squares that require you to do things like an improvised rap or dance to move ahead, smell someone's shoe or sing the alphabet backwards.  We also brought back the Vortex squares to jump ahead in the game and the Instant Death square.  One new feature we added was a Complete Restart square that sends everyone back to the start.

There are a few squares that also allow a player to use more dice for the rest of the game upping their chances of winning by moving them more quickly.

Everyone helped with ideas, colouring, doodling and working out game play.  It was a great group activity for the whole family and everyone was excited to play the game they had a part in making.

The best part of the game is the game token my niece designed in polymer clay.  I told her they could be based on anything, the more random the better,  She ended up making a rag doll, an orange slice, an eyeball, a chicken foot, a nose, a cactus and a toothbrush.  So very random.
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There is no strategy, no reasoning, no skill.  It's all just insane luck.  A no-brainer, semi-frustrating, 5 minute to five hours board game that may or may not drive you insane.