Monday, February 25, 2013

Angry Birds Bean Bag Toss and Plinko

After a few requests I am finally posting the instructions {I use that word loosely} for how I made my game boards used for the Angry Birds Blue and Gold last year.  

Here goes...
I went to Home Depot and purchased one 4'x8' sheet of 1/4" plywood for $10.  I had them cut it in half {4x4} so I could fit it in my car.

Can I just say, looking at these pictures is really making me homesick for Arizona!
I can even smell the dust in the air :0( 

Anyway, First the beanbag toss... 
Really, I painted the board first.  I sprayed the sky blue and the grass Shrek green {simply because those two cans were already in my stash of spray paint}.   I added some white clouds for a little extra touch.

Once I had the background painted, I grabbed a couple of scrap boards I had lying around 
{It helps to be a wood hoarder when you are doing these projects},
painted them brown, then added lines to the boards using a sharpie to make them "look like wood", even though they ARE wood ;0)  I also used the sharpie to add detail to the grass and clouds. 

Next I marked the game board to show where to glue the wood planks. They were glued them in place with wood glue, then in a very crazy way, I turned the board over and nailed the plywood to the scrap wood pillars.  It involved using the other half of my plywood and kinda sandwiching the whole thing....but a smart person would just wait until the glue dried.

The next step was to make the holes for the bean bags to go into.  I took plates from my kitchen and traced them to mark circles on the board.  For the holes on the bottom row I used 12" plates. then used 9" plates for the others.

RotoZip RZ05-1100 RZ5 5 Amp 30,000 RPM Spiral Saw with 3 Jaw Chuck, 1 Sabrecut Bit, and 2 Guidepoint Bits
I used my RotoZip to cut the circles out.  I plan to do a Toolbox post soon on the RotoZip so stay tuned for that one.  

Finally, I took the little piggies I had made with THESE printables and glued two ribbons to the back.  I hot glued the ribbon to the back of the game board and we were set!
   

As for the beanbags, I made them myself!   
I used the printables HERE again, and printed them out onto "Dark T-Shirt Transfer"


I cut the shapes out on the black line, then ironed the birdies to same-color fabric as directed in the transfer paper instructions.  These bean bags have been used A LOT and this is the worst wear I can find.  A small portion of the transfer paper had come loose, but a little visit from the iron and this birdie would be good as new.

Once the images were ironed on, I sewed around them leaving some space between the print and the stitching.  Here you can see the back.  Don't look at my horrible stitches though!  It can be kinda tough to close these guys up neatly when they are full of beans. 

Here are the rest of my guys. 

The moms were so impressed with my bean bags a couple were trying to buy them from me ;0)
They would make a great, inexpensive gift for a little guy in your life!
There you have it, how I made my Angry Bird Bean Bag Toss

Our Cub Scouts and their families loved it!

Now for the Plinko Board!
***Disclaimer- I had to leave these boards behind when we moved to South Dakota, so bear with me here.  This board requires exact measuring and I don't have the board to look at any more so I will be guessing a bit.***

I started out with the other half of my plywood board.  I ended up having to glue a second board behind the center section because the 1/4" wood was too thin for my nails to hold on to.  I wood glued the smaller 1/4" board to the back, then laid it on the ground to get to work. 


I know this picture shows my board painted, but I actually marked my board for the nails first, nailed them in, then painted the board. 

The hardest part was actually figuring where to nail.  I used wide mouth canning lids as my plinko disks.  They measure about 3 1/4" wide.  Here comes the guessing!  I believe I left 4 3/4" between each nail across the board, and 5 1/4 or 5 1/2" between each row of nails. 

You can see in this picture above that the rows are staggered.  You cannot nail one right above another the whole board down or your disks won't "Plink"  They need a jagged track to bounce through.


 I painted the center green again, and went with black for the sides.  I grabbed some 1x2" wood boards from my stash and sprayed them black as well.  One board was glued on each side of that center portion.  They are a must to keep the Plinko disks from falling off the board.  

More 1x2" boards were cut for the bottom to mark the different collecting pockets.  I glued pigs in two of the five spots.  The idea was if your Plinko disk ended up in a pocket with the pigs you got a special surprise.

That is basically it.  I added some birds to the black sides for fun, then made my disks up from printables from the SAME PLACE.

Plinko was also a huge hit. Do note that you need to be able to lean the board back a ways for the disks to stay on the board.

Let me know if you have any questions!
Happy Crafting everyone :0)

4 comments:

  1. Thank you thank you thank you! I will be making this for my daughters 8th birthday in 19 days! Thanks again! Love this

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  2. Fantastic - very fine work you have done :o)
    My two sons (3 and 7 years old) are having their shared angry birds birthdayparty next month, and I have now two really fine ideas for the day. Thank you.

    Tine (a reader of your blog in Denmark, and sorry for my poor english)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tine, I am sorry for responding so long after your comment! Thank you so much for commenting on my post. I hope that your sons totally LoVE the games at their parties and I wish you luck in making them yourself. My kids absolutely loved hearing that you read all the way over in Denmark! Thanks for making our day, many days over.

      Thanks for reading AND commenting!
      Vanessa

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