Sunday, August 13, 2017

Yardzee & Yarkle


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 traced these dice shapes onto my silhouette and cut them out.



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 found these cute score sheets. There are tons of other ones online, but these are my favorite.


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 used the same design on the top of the score sheets for the bucket label.  I traced it into my silhouette machine, enlarged it, and cut out onto Oracal 651 vinyl.


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.


I included a calculator, game directions, scorecards, and markers inside my bucket.

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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