I found this great tutorial on The Thrifty Chick who sadly, passed away just recently. She had so many cute craft ideas and tutorials. I copied this post directly from her blog, not knowing if her site will remain active with her gone.
Here's the tutorial in Stacey's own words:
Supply List:5- wooden blocks/cubes, (These can be in any size you prefer. When I first made this game 3 years ago I used 3 x 3 paper cubes. It was fun that they were so big, but awkward to store the game) The cubes I used for this tutorial are 1 1/2" x 1 1/2" wooden cubes. I just purchased a 10 foot piece of 2 x 2 wood for $2.50 at Lowes and cut the amount of cubes I needed. (I don't know why wood is measured this way, they say the wood is 2 x 2 but the actual size is 1 1/2 x 1 1/2??) I did find these wooden cubes for a farely decent price on
oriental trading If you want to buy some ready made.
Acrylic paint for the actual color of cubes you want (mine are painted in white)
1- 12 x 12 sheet of scrapbook paper in whatever pattern you choose
Mod Podge
3 sponge brushes
A container to store your finished dice/cubes in ( I just bought a small chipboard box with a lid from Michaels Craft store)
6 different pictures cut in squares
The first thing you'll want to do, regardless of where you get your wood is lightly sand all the edges so they are smooth, and then paint each entire cube with 2 layers of whatever color paint you choose. (Oh and I didn't have my box in this picture, but if you are going to store your game in a chipboard box you'll want to paint it also with 2 layers of paint at the same time)
You'll want to let them dry at least 45min to an hour, or until you know for sure they are totally dry. In the meantime you'll want to cut your patterned paper into the right size pieces to place as a background on each side of the cube. You will have 6 sides to each cube, and 5 cubes. So you will need 30 small squares of paper. How big you want them, is based upon how big your cubes are. (I cut my patterned paper into 1 1/4" x 1 1/4" pieces, so there was a quarter inch wooden boarder around each piece of paper.)
Next you'll want to spread 1 layer of mod podge onto one side of the wooden block and place a square of patterned paper over it. Making sure you rub all over on the paper pushing out any bubbles underneath it and sealing down the edges and corners. There was no rhyme or reason to what angle my patterned paper faced, it's just whatever floats your boat!! Once you have placed the paper on, you'll then want to paint a second layer of mod podge over the patterned paper, completely sealing it on. This is where the waiting begins. You'll want to do the mod podged pattern paper on all sides of the cubes. But you'll want to wait at least 5 - 10 minutes to let each side dry before placing it face down to do another side.
If you want to add a matching patterned paper game title to your box like I did, this is when you'll do the same process as the cubes. By painting one mod podge layer, then sticking your patterned paper over it, and then painting a final mod podge layer over your patterned paper.
All of the patterned paper mod podged to the cubes and now drying...
While waiting for my cubes to dry, I spent about 25 minutes picking out what pictures I wanted to use on the cubes and printing them. You will need 6 different pictures, and then each picture duplicated 5 times. I just used my Photoshop to line up my pictures and print them all on 1 page. (My pictures were 1 inch x 1 inch squared. You can cut your pics out any size you wish for your cubes. I wanted mine to be about 1/2" less than my wood size)
While editing and cropping my photos down to size, I used my round paintbrush in photoshop to add a white dot to the corner of each pic. I then assigned a number to each pic, representing the number the pic would be on the dice(cube).
Once all the mod podged dice were totally dry...
I then added my pictures to the blocks the same way I added the patterned paper. With a layer of mod podge, then the pic smoothed down, and a sealing layer of mod podge over the pic.
Again, you'll want to let the mod podge dry for about 5-10 minutes between layers and pics. After it's all mod podged you'll want to leave it drying on a cooling rack over night. And that's it! By the next day it should be totally dry and ready to play with!!
I printed up my own game cards to store with my game. These are totally identical to the actual games cards that come with the game of yahtzee, just in a cuter font to go with my home-made game. (To download actual Yahtzee scorecards, you can click
HERE)
A close-up pic of the final storage box the game goes into..
A close-up pic of the final dice/cubes...
Obviously you don't even have to make this a family yahtzee game. You can personalize it with any theme!! It would make a great gift to a family member who loves games!! Whatever you decide to do, hopefully you will have as many fun hours enjoying your game as we have!!
I love this idea and hope to make one for my family soon.
