Board game

Build your own board game for school holiday fun!

Resene upcycling for good with Sarah Herring - Project 60

Finished project

You will need

• An existing box or board with holes already drilled into it – or make one yourself
• Dowel/wooden rail
• Hand saw, sandpaper, testpot brushes and/or roller
• Resene Quick Dry waterborne primer undercoat
• Resene testpots in your choice of colours: Sarah chose Resene Quarter Truffle, Resene Rose Gold and Resene Soothe
• X and O stickers

Instructions

Top tips:  Even though the chances of you finding another one of these custom boards in a second-hand store are pretty slim, you could always custom make your own board. Or it would be super easy to reinterpret this project using a flat MDF base and a painted grid, and use these instructions for making and decorating the playing pegs.

Step one:   Sarah came across this interesting wooden board in a Salvation Army Family Store and wasn’t entirely sure what it was meant to be! But part of the fun of upcycling is giving things a completely new purpose, so Sarah used her imagination and decided it would make a pretty cool noughts and crosses board game by adding some playing pegs.

The first thing Sarah needed to do was purchase some wooden dowel/hand rail in the right size to fit the existing holes on the board. Sarah cut this down using a hand saw into equal pegs to make the playing pieces.

If you can’t find a wooden board like Sarah did, you could create your own.

Step two:  Once all the pegs are cut, sand them and the board to prepare for painting.

Step three:  Once sanded, apply one coat of Resene Quick Dry waterborne primer undercoat to both the board and the pegs.

Step four:  Paint the whole board in two coats of your chosen colour. Sarah used Resene Quarter Truffle.

Step five: While the board is drying, paint all the playing pegs with two coats of your chosen colour. Sarah used Resene Rose Gold. Leave one end of each peg unpainted. Then, once your colour is completely dry, paint two coats of a complementary colour to the remaining unpainted ends. Sarah used Resene Soothe.

Step six: Once the board and all the pegs are dry, apply X and O alphabet stickers to the peg ends. Sarah stuck X’s on the ends painted in Resene Soothe and O’s on the Rose Gold ends. It looks so pretty you won’t mind it being displayed on a shelf when you’re not playing!

If you prefer you can paint on the X’s and O’s in your chosen colours.