It's a Carnival!
Hey reader!
This next post is a one off of a project I did for staff appreciation at my day job. We were having a carnival themed gathering where folks could play carnival games and win tickets for a raffle. The only problem of course was that we were using a regular conference room and needed to convert it into a Carnival. This meant creating carnival games! Getting to make fun things AND have it be a legitimate part of my day job is a dream come true! Some people dream of bedding famous celebrities or winning the lottery. I dream of crafting and getting paid for it, go figure.
My task was a balloon dart game. You know the ones, throw a dart at a balloon, pop it and win the prize inside. Typically the balloon contains an S, M or L indicating the size of the price. 98% of the balloons have S's in them, of course.
Since it seems unlikely I would be allowed to just hand people darts and have them go to town, I had to come up with a less pointy solution. I landed on this creation, and it came out much better than I could have hoped. The idea is to have a wall of cups with tissue paper in front of them - standing in for balloons. Players are given marbles - standing in for darts - and throw them at the cups, hoping to "pop" through to the inside of the cup. If they do, whatever is inside is theirs! Simple enough idea. Now to build it!
I started with three of these awesome trifold boards that you probably used to give a class presentation or two in your day. I used some painters tape to create a carnival looking design on the sides.
Since this was a work project, you might notice that I am in a different setting than normal. I didn't have my normal supplies with me so some of this is pretty improvisational.
I did one with this triangle motif, one with stripes and one with a thicker stripe and single triangle. I used red, blue and yellow paint to give the boards a carnival color scheme. The paints I had access to were a little thin, so it took a few coats to get it covering, but it came out great.
Next was to hot glue the cups to the center parts of the boards. I did a few patterns, but at the end of the day it really didn't matter. As long as the three boards had the same number of cups it was fair.
I cut a bunch of tissue paper into squares that would fit over my cups. I also had small clear rubber bands that looked like orthodontic bands. I don't know if you ever had to use those. They are a little hellish. This was a much better context for them.
The night of the event, I filled every cup with candy, tickets and thank you notes and then placed the tissue paper on top - sealing them in place with rubber bands.
My coworkers tried it a few times to see how it would go. They were struggling and I momentarily thought this was going to be a fail in front of a bunch of my coworkers and colleagues. Fortunately, the first staff member to try it immediately got two cups and won a ton of tickets. Over the course of the next two hours, I reset the cups once and only lost two all night! All in all, a pretty awesome game that was easy to make and deceptively challenging. Make a few for your next backyard party or block party!
Keep trying to make cool stuff.
Until next time,
JoshPrime
This next post is a one off of a project I did for staff appreciation at my day job. We were having a carnival themed gathering where folks could play carnival games and win tickets for a raffle. The only problem of course was that we were using a regular conference room and needed to convert it into a Carnival. This meant creating carnival games! Getting to make fun things AND have it be a legitimate part of my day job is a dream come true! Some people dream of bedding famous celebrities or winning the lottery. I dream of crafting and getting paid for it, go figure.
My task was a balloon dart game. You know the ones, throw a dart at a balloon, pop it and win the prize inside. Typically the balloon contains an S, M or L indicating the size of the price. 98% of the balloons have S's in them, of course.
Since it seems unlikely I would be allowed to just hand people darts and have them go to town, I had to come up with a less pointy solution. I landed on this creation, and it came out much better than I could have hoped. The idea is to have a wall of cups with tissue paper in front of them - standing in for balloons. Players are given marbles - standing in for darts - and throw them at the cups, hoping to "pop" through to the inside of the cup. If they do, whatever is inside is theirs! Simple enough idea. Now to build it!
I started with three of these awesome trifold boards that you probably used to give a class presentation or two in your day. I used some painters tape to create a carnival looking design on the sides.Since this was a work project, you might notice that I am in a different setting than normal. I didn't have my normal supplies with me so some of this is pretty improvisational.
I did one with this triangle motif, one with stripes and one with a thicker stripe and single triangle. I used red, blue and yellow paint to give the boards a carnival color scheme. The paints I had access to were a little thin, so it took a few coats to get it covering, but it came out great.Next was to hot glue the cups to the center parts of the boards. I did a few patterns, but at the end of the day it really didn't matter. As long as the three boards had the same number of cups it was fair.
I cut a bunch of tissue paper into squares that would fit over my cups. I also had small clear rubber bands that looked like orthodontic bands. I don't know if you ever had to use those. They are a little hellish. This was a much better context for them.
The night of the event, I filled every cup with candy, tickets and thank you notes and then placed the tissue paper on top - sealing them in place with rubber bands.
Keep trying to make cool stuff.
Until next time,
JoshPrime
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