Make your own MONOPOLY

It was my mom's 60th birthday, and we were planning to go on a family vacation. My sisters and I wanted to make her something special, and one of the many things that we produced for her birthday (T-shirts, private movie screening, photo album, a short clip etc..) we also decided to make her a costume monopoly board, featuring some of the milestones in her life.

I could not have done this without finding this amazing monopoly - photoshop template created by Brad, and without the help of my lovely, two older sisters.
Here's what you do:

Plan your board. decide what do you want to write in each square. Download the Photoshop files from Brad's site. Change the squares according to your plans, add photos or cartoons when necessary. create the property cards accordingly. Note that the board size is about 60x60cm, though you can always make it smaller.

Decorate the board with family photos. That's a matter of preference and taste. Just make sure you have some family photos on the computer, crop them as desired and add them to the board. Best is to use the "Extract" command in photoshop (under the filter menu).

Chance / Community chest- we changed that to surprise/ greeting. the thought was that the players will fill the cards with greetings for my mom and surprise gifts or tokens they wish to give her. we made some empty cards for that purpose.

Make the houses and hotels. we couldn't find any Monopoly hoses on stores and it was too late to buy some on ebay, so we made some. We bough 1x1cm wooden cubes. For the houses, we glued little roofs on them  made of a red paper stripe. For the hotels, we just glued two cubes together.  

Make the money. since it was our mom's birthday, we chose to make money with her face on it. We took a good profile picture of her, used the sketch filter in photoshop and placed her face in the center of a Monopoly bill. After I had that, I just changed the value of the bills. You can then print the bills on colored paper, and get some costumed Monopoly money. 

Make the players. we had a lot of ideas, but due to shortness of time we choose some figures out of the "toy a day" site. we made little heads of the family players and glued them on the folded toys.

 

We printed the board in a printing shop along with everything else, but if you have a colored printer you can print the things at home. We glued the board on some hard board carton to make it strong enough, and to make sure it doesn't wrinkle. We also made a box out of used carton.  

That's that. I can not say that it's not a lot of work, cause it is, but it made our mom so so happy, so I guess it was worth it.

Happy birthday mom!

I find you very attractive- make cool magnets, pt.II

I know it might seem that I have a small magnet obsession, but we really do have loads of unwanted magnets and a lot of junk hanging on our fridge and front door (and we don't even have kids yet).
This magnets project is a great idea for a something to do with all the bear caps left after Shavuot holiday or the weekend .

What you'll need

• bear bottle caps
• nice looking paper
• cardboard
• white plastic glue
• some sort of contact adhesive
• round, strong magnets

this time I've used some nicly patterned origami paper I had lying around and bear bottle caps; I think that with this method, any paper can work (except for cardboards and such).

Method

1. If your bottle cap has dark patterning on it and your paper is realtively thin (especially if using napkins), you should cover the top of the cap before you continue. paint spary will work, I find that cutting out cardboard circles and just gluing them is easyier, cleaner and cheaper.
2. Make a mixture of plastic glue and water. I didn't measure the quantities,but you can tell there's a lot of glue in there by the color. don't be cheap. Rinse your paper in the glue water for a few minutes to soften it abit.
3. Put the cap in the center of the paper, slowly fold the paper inwards while   keeping the face of the cap as tight as possible. use one hand to hold the    folded paper in place, and the other to keep on folding.
4. Let the thing dry for 10-20 minutes. in the mean time, you can cover some more caps.
5. Cut another circle that will fit the inside of the cap. when the paper is relatively dry, glue the card circle to cover up the folded paper. you can use the magnets at this point to tighten the folded paper back. let dry for another 10-20 minutes.
6. When this complex is dry, use contact adhesive to attach the magnet to the bottom of your covered cap.
7.     Let dry, and you're done!

Happy Holidays all!

DIY Toilet paper hanger tutorial

hey, what do you know: procrastination is a serious problem. hey, I even procrastinate the projects I start in order to procrastinate other things (and even procrastinated publishing this post. I have a serious problem)!
this project is something I've been "working" on for quite some time: finding new looks for our awesome toilet paper hanger, a brilliant thing by itself, shamelessly copied from my brilliant sister, Inbar.

the brilliant toilet paper hanger requires only two things: a string and a stick. both should both be durable and strong enough to hold the weight of several toilet paper rolls, one on top of the other.
the whole "improvement" idea started because after some time, the natural yarn that was holding our toilet papers tore and needed to be replaced. and then I thought, that hey- if I could protect the string the hole thing could last longer. and hey, if I'm covering up the string anyhow, i can use a stronger string to begin with.


I started by making some paper beads. there are endless tutorials around the web as how to make these; I like this tutorial, as her beads turned out so nice. when the beads dried i tried making the holes with a drill as mentioned in the tutorial- but then my genius dad suggested that I'll burn my way through, and by using a hot nail the thing took seconds.

my braking point was the painting: it took a me a long time finding the time and patience to paint these, and finding a place to let them dry.

eventually i made some holes in an empty energy bar box, that was a prefect drying stand.
I was not sure about putting some polish on the beads, but since our toilet is right next to the shower i thought it can only help preserve the beads longer.

as a last step i threaded the beads on a fishermen's string and tied the original stick at the end- this was I got the stronger version that maintained the natural look I like so much.To hang it, i made a loop at the top.

the brilliancy of this thing is its simplicity- and easy adjustments that can change its style to match different looking toilets. a clean look can be achieved by using some fishermen's string and an empty pen (transparent plastic), a more natural look can be achieved by using unthreaded string and a wooden stick, or you can use colurfull beads to add more interest like i show here. there are thousands of other ideas- i'm sure you can come up with more. (:

DIY tutorial: Recycled Orbit gum pack planters

In my weekly routine I drive a lot. Every day. 50km there and back again.

 The Orbit gum big packs are a necessity to me, and sometimes the only thing that keeps me from falling half asleep during morning traffic. As it happens, I started gathering quite a bit of empty packs- they were in such a cute little shape, they had to be good for something. And because I'm a planting person (I guess at some point a post about my plants will follow), I've decided to turn it into a nice little planter. very easy, and a perfect gift.
you will need:

• empty Orbit gum pack
• scissors
• acrylic paint (or anything else that will stay on plastic)
• a nail and a source of heat (lighter, home stove)
• some planting compost and a plant

 what you do:

1. screw off the cover of the pack. 
2. cut off the part that the cover was attached to (see picture).
3. paint the pack. I did about 4 layers to have a semi-uniform paint, you can adjust this to your liking. let dry between layers.
4. when painting finished, make hole to allow water draining: heat up a nail (don't do this in bare hands, use something!) and while hot, make holes at the bottom of the container. make at least 5 holes (or your plant will rot from the inside).
5. fill up with dirt, plant something and water. place in a place that will please the plant you just planted.

Enjoy!

Avenging the death of our IKEA clock: DIY recycled magazine clock

And so about a two weeks ago the IKEA clock we had in our kitchen decided to drop dead. Battery changes and such did nothing; the clock would appear to work and then stop again while we were sleeping (that sneaky bastard).

so I decided to take advantage of the opportunity and avenge the clock's death by turning my IKEA catalog into a brand new colorful and functional clock!
I got the general idea from luckydog post in craftster, and also from a similar post in "esprit cabane".

 The paper was kindly provided by IKEA colorful catalog. It was folded and glued either with plain UHU stick glue or simple plastic glue (UHU is easier to handle). A watch mechanism was easy to find in a local crafts store, so I got one of those too. The finished clock was glued to a cardboard back that I made using an old carton box that came with a pot I bought a while ago.

  

 I won't deny that I have some issues with the distance between the mechanism and the clock itself (ther's friction that causes the hands to jam), but this is the general look. (: