DIY Bachelorette Party Game

If you’ve read previous blog posts of mine, you’ve probably noticed that much of it has been dominated with topics surrounding my friend’s recent wedding. That’s because many of the projects I've recently worked on have been motivated by it. Now that the main event is over, I can take a breather and start writing about some of the cool things that I made!

As soon as I started thinking about my friend getting married, I knew I needed to make her something INCREDIBLE. This is a friend of mine who has been the recipient of some of my most elaborate and outrageous gifts for many years and who I began my friendship with over a practical joke. So when I learned that the bridesmaids were planning a weekend pre-wedding celebration, this seemed like the perfect excuse to gift my friend a completely custom hand-made EPIC BOARD GAME. The best way I can describe this game is a combination of would you rather, truth or dare, minute to win it, and lots of ridiculousness. This is a game that must be played with fun spirited people who won’t hesitate to make fools of themselves. If you've ever played "Quelf" it's like that, but better.

I am thinking about creating pdf downloads of all the cards and the game pieces so that they can be purchased, but for now I will simply give a brief description and you can use your imagination to create your own version! (Or email me for some of my ideas!)

The game is essentially a card game with a scoreboard….and a penalty wheel. There is also a separate penalty deck. To make the cards, I drew unique borders and designs for the front and backs of each category. I drew them in pen on paper and then scanned them into my computer to resize and format for the cards. I printed the front and backs in coordinating cardstock and then glued them together before cutting the cards out and rounding the edges for a more finished look. Two layers of cardstock resulted in a nice card thickness, but you could easily make the cards a single double sided piece of cardstock to cut down on bulk and work.

There are 5 categories in a mixed main deck: Would you rather, Head-to-Head, Challenge, Guess Who, and G-Spot. G-Spot is a category specific to my friend, Grady. These questions can be used for any person who is having a special day, but you might want to come up with another clever title if their name doesn’t begin with G.

The Would You Rather category is just that - hilarious would you rather questions that players have to guess what each other would rather. Healthy debate is encouraged.

In the Head-to-Head Category, there are several adapted Minute To Win It style competitions. Each card specifies how to choose your opponent for the activity based on an arbitrary fact (such as the player who you have known the longest).

In the Challenge category there are different challenges that must be completed either by you or by the group.

The Guess Who category has questions to which all players have to write down their answer and then the cardholder has to assign the answers to players.

G-Spot requires everyone to try and guess Grady’s answer (the way I decided to do the scorekeeping, the bride definitely benefits….but I figured that was okay).

Everyone had an adorable game piece. I doodled some characters, scanned them into my computer, printed on cardstock, colored with colored pencils, adhered cork to the back and then made a chipboard stand!

As players received and lost points, they moved their pieces around the game board. The game board has a total of 30 points (completely arbitrary). Each score has a rule associated with it that must be followed for the entire time the player remains on that space. This often makes game play pretty difficult, depending on the cooperativeness of the group playing. I made the board itself out of 4 pieces of chipboard duct taped together and covered with a single piece of butcher paper. The rules themselves were printed on cardstock and cut with rounded corners. I stacked the rules on coordinating patterned and solid cardstock and cut out cork numbers for the scores.

If at any time a player notices someone not following their rule, they may call them on a penalty. The offending player must then spin the penalty wheel and either lose points or perform a penalty card.

This game was SO MUCH FUN! We only ended up getting through about ⅓ of the cards and we had to adjust our scoring system half way through to speed up the game, because we played it all night!! I was careful to make sure that any inappropriate content was only printed on cards, so this is a game that can very easily be sorted through and made completely awesome for playing with all ages. I can’t wait to play this again!

I came up with a rule sheet complete with game supply list, so if you would like specifics about how I determined scoring, or you want help brainstorming your own game, just let me know!

DIY bridesmaids t-shirts

My best friend just recently got married, which of course just meant LOTS of fun crafting projects for me! One thing I knew I really wanted to make for this event were matching bridesmaids t-shirts! I’ve made tons of different shirts over the years for myself and my friends, but this was the first time I took on the challenge of making multiple matching shirts. I also wanted to make sure they had added special elements that would tie them into the rest of the wedding, so this was certainly a big undertaking, but I think the results were worth it! Everyone in the bridal party seemed very happy with them, and I even had one groomsman upset that he did not get one as well.

I decided to use very basic light gray t-shirts for the base, primarily because they were cheap but also because I needed something good for both painting and sewing. I did opt for a “girl” cut though. I first needed to add the text to the back. My friend snapped a picture for me of the cute initial and date stamp they were using for some DIY wedding projects, so I re-sized the picture in order to create a stencil. I also picked a coordinating font to add in their wedding hashtag.

Ideally, screen printing is the way to accomplish the stenciling I did on these shirts. However, I needed a lot of supplies to make that happen, and I’m on a budget. So I decided to instead use freezer paper stenciling, a technique I’ve had a lot of success with in the past. Simply draw or print directly onto the paper side of the freezer paper and then carefully cut your stencil out with an exacto knife. You can then iron the stencil wax side down directly to your fabric. In theory, these stencils could be used multiple times if you were very careful to not overheat while ironing the stencil on and then careful when removing the stencil. I wanted to ensure that each t-shirt would have equally precise lettering and I had plenty of time, so I just made a separate stencil for each shirt.

Once I had adhered the stencils to the shirts, I mixed up the fabric paint colors I wanted and applied with a foam brush. Then I got creative and awkwardly hanged t-shirts all over my loft while they dried. As I sat in my makeshift sweatshop, I sewed small chest pockets for the shirts. To match my friends farm wedding I wanted to make the pockets out of burlap, but I also wanted to avoid the burlap fraying and wanted the pockets to be strong enough to be functional. I decided to line the burlap pocket with two layers of cotton muslin folded over at the top. This allowed for the muslin to form the structure of the pocket, with the burlap seam completely hidden. I sewed all the pockets on after removing the stencils from the shirts once completely dry.

With the pockets all sewn on, I repeated the same freezer paper stenciling technique with a simple bird design I drew. I added strips of freezer paper to stencil a line around the sleeve (I later added painted flags to the line). In retrospect, I would have designed the front slightly differently as stenciling on the burlap resulted in less precise results than I would have liked. I would recommend either stenciling a simpler design on the burlap pocket, or making the pocket out of a different material.

Once the fronts were dry enough to remove the stencil, I added flags on to the painted string around the sleeve (my friend tells me this is called “bunting”). I decided to sacrifice a few foam paint brushes to turn them into triangle stamps for the flags. These ultimately worked, but the foam only stayed glued to the posts for the first half of the shirts, then I simply had to carefully stamp/finger paint the rest. If you have more than a few shirts to make, I would recommend constructing better stamps. In order to complete stamping on both the front and the back of the sleeve at the same time, I inserted a piece of curved cardboard for support. Be very careful when hanging the shirt to dry that the wet sleeve does not fall to touch the rest of the shirt.

Once all the paint was dry, I just had to add the last touch: lace hem! My friend had a very cute farm wedding in a barn with lots of lace accents, so I wanted to bring some of that to the shirts. I had never worked with lace before, so I found a cotton lace that I figured would be easy to sew and not be an issue with washing along with the t-shirt. Adding the lace was super easy, I simply folded under some of the shirt sleeve hem and then added the lace and hemmed the sleeve with a single top stitch!

I’m super happy how these turned out and everyone looked great in their shirts! ​