Some Projects are Simpler than Others

Hey readers!
In an attempt to continue to not work on my quilt, I am going to write about a really small project I was working on for a little bit. I was inspired (term used loosely here) by my purchase of Pack O Games by Perplext.

If you are unfamiliar-which if you are reading this you are likely someone I know pretty well and therefore have heard me tell this story-is an awesome series of games where the creator's main constraint was that all the games had to be card games that fit in a package the size of a pack of gum. The games are really varied in both play and art style. Some have photographic art and very simple text, others have cute cartoon graphics. It really is a neat exercise - and the games are pretty fun. Granted I have not played all 16 yet, but I have liked all the ones I have played so far. They are quick to pick up and some are surprisingly complex!

There are a few pretty cool review from Dice Tower, as well as awesome short videos explaining play. I can't say I am the biggest board/card game player. I am much more partial to video games. However, I am a sucker for cool and interesting design and these games have that!

I'd really like to try and design my own game sometime. I am not naive enough to think I have anywhere near enough game theory knowledge to make a game that is fun - yet. I did find a cool website that lets you design your own cards though in the form of Shuffled Ink. Maybe there will be a bunch of posts about a board game design at some point.

This is long winded nonsense. I really need to jsut give up on this quilt for a while. What's terrible is that I have two quilts I want to make next, but I am worried I will just keep giving up because they are so much more labor intensive than puppets (in my opinion), and frankly, the idea of having a blanket at the end is less of a draw than a toy. I'm clearly 12.

Anyway, all this game stuff inspired me to do something I have wanted to do for ages, which is some cool jar displays. In my mom's house, she has these awesome GIANT jars filled with things she cooks with regularly. Things like flour, sugar, oatmeal, and rice. Considering I just had to correct myself from writing "flower," you can guess I am not the biggest cook. No, I want my jars to be a little cooler.

So I decided I wanted to do some jars filled with dice and game parts. I found it surprisingly hard to find assorted game parts that didn't have me buying 12 pawns from sorry and 5 monopoly pieces at a time, so for now dice will have to do.

Step one is to obtain a jar. I found a lot of really pretty jars online but they were all much pricier than I wanted. I stumbled upon some really cheap jars at Walmart in the pickle aisle. The jar pictured here was just over 4 bucks, and I actually went with the Walmart brand pickles so the jar was under $4 and I got some bonus pickles out of the deal.

You can find great jars online and in home decor sections of the store, but why pay extra and miss out on bonus pickles? I can't think of a reason. Unless you are terrified of pickles.

Anyway, the most enjoyable part of this project was eating an absurd number of pickles. A few garlic-ey days later and I had myself a nice empty jar. Getting the label off was easy, just needed a little Goo Gone and some time to soak in the sink.

Then came the internet searching. I decided I wanted a large variety of dice and Amazon did not disappoint. I started with some pastel dice. I bought a set of about a hundred. That is when I realized that I might need more dice.

So I set out to buy some more. I ordered over 700 dice. I might have gotten a little out of control. While attempting to show my leasing office staff what I had ordered, I spilled all of them across the floor. That wasn't humiliating and strange, but now I had plenty of dice in all different styled.

The filling process was kind of fun, though I discovered that I had way more dice than I needed now, and that the red clear dice were so numerous that they made the jar seem less random.

 Ignore that you can see my living room there, but notice that 1. there are so many dice that there are some in my drink ware. 2. that the red dice are the first thing you notice.

So I separated out the red dice, and wanted to put them somewhere else. I found an old glass bottle of grapefruit juice that JustLeah drank since she is very interested in urinary tract health (shout out to our podcast, J and L Watches - now on twitter at @JandLWatches) to use for the red dice.

I think it looks super cool, but I wanted to feel a little more crafty so I decided to mess with the lid. My mom's are spray painted white, and I might wind up doing that.

For now, I just wanted the jars to look a little older. I decided to give the lid a little - ok a lot - of sanding. Honestly a few minutes with the sandpaper and it suddenly looked like it was a pretty old lid.

So not the most complex project in the world, but I really like the way it looked in my bedroom in front of my map.

And so, I made a cool thing, and managed to avoid working on the quilt another week. Go me. This project would have been pretty inexpensive - save for the dice. You might have a bunch of dice from games all over the place. I didn't. I had a few gift cards to pay for the dice, and it was something I wanted to do for a while, so I have no guilt about the rising price of dice.

That being said, you could also put other cool things in there. I want to do one full of scrabble tiles (I have a weirdly large number of Bananagrams and Scrabble games) and another with Monopoly hotels and houses.

Keep making cool stuff!
Until next time,
JoshPrime