We love playing games and spending time outside with a family. I have been wanting to make a set of yard dice for a long time, and finally got around to it. I am so excited to make extra sets for my family. Other than being time consuming, they were fairly easy to make. Right now I just have the Yardzee and Yarkle directions in my bucket, but I plan on adding other dice game rules in the future.
Here's how I made mine:
(Or you can just buy one on AMAZON here)
I bought this VERSA TOOL for my husband for Christmas. I thought he could do some wood-burnings, and we could also use it to decorate some foam pumpkins for Halloween.
One of the tips the VERSA TOOL came with is a circle shape.
It is exactly the same size as the dice circles I cut out.
I cut up a 10 ft. 4X4 into cube shapes. Obviously, there were more cubes then I needed, but I wanted to make a few sets for gifts. Remember just because they are called 4X4 they are actually a little smaller, so measure them before you cut to get exact cubes. After you cut them, give them a good sanding. I used this hand sander, but you can use whatever sanding method you want. I paid special attention to the cut edges, I wanted all edges to match. For Yarkle you will need six dice, but if you are only making a Yardzee game, you only need five dice.
I traced the dice circles onto the cubes.
You can either paint your circles, vinyl them, drill them, use a sharpie marker and color them in, or burn them.
I heated up the VERSA TOOL on the highest setting. I applied the circle tip to the wood for about 10 seconds. I found sometimes that was too much and sometimes I needed to hold it for up to 30 seconds. I recommend doing this outside. It does have a little smoke and smoky smell.
After I burned all the circles on the dice, I wanted to protect them with polyurethane. I put 6 coats on. I was easy to get all the coats right, because I turned them all to one. Then, the second coat I turned all the dice to two and so on.
I laminated my score sheets with my personal laminator. This will make it easier to reuse them with either a wet erase or dry erase marker. I personally like wet erase better. You can easily clean them with a baby wipe for wet or tissue for dry erase.
I wanted a good size bucket to hold my set. The 2 gallon size was just a little to small, so I went with the 5 gallon size. I love the size to house the game, and it came with a lid, but it was a little large to use when rolling the dice. You can use any bucket or pail the dice will fit in.
My poor dice did get a little dinged up when we played the game, but it was a lot of fun.
Just think of it as the are now rustic.
Hope you have a lot of fun getting outside for a some family time.
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