Marvelous Pigs in Satin

I had a high energy day today. So I cleaned the house, folded all the laundry, meal prepped, and did some projects that have been waiting for awhile, including cutting a board to go underneath the Guinea pig cage. (Because the cage is a hair wider than the laundry room counter, it needed better support.)

The Man is the House has been saying he would do it, but I got tired of waiting. He is gone to guard drill this weekend, of course.

I couldn’t find all the tools- like the measuring tape. I had to improvise with my quilting ruler.

I was successful, and now there is less Guinea pig bedding getting kicked out onto the floor.

Merry Christmas!

Since the twins were born, and I think maybe even longer ago–possibly for the last 6 years–I have not attempted making anything for Christmas. I just accepted the impossibility of making anything with twin babies in the house. This year the Christmas crafting bug could not be denied. It was my turn to give to my little brother, Sammy, and My best idea was to make a family version of Pit (a favorite game in our family.) Its a trading game. Usually the commodities traded are things like Wheat, Sugar, Corn, and Barley …a.k.a. Stock Market commodities. I made it with pictures of our family, so the commodities are Sammy, Katie, Eddie, etc. Mom is the Bear card, and Dad is the Bull card. 😂😂. We had great fun playing on Christmas Day.

Let me tell you, it was more cutthroat than regular pit because the stakes felt higher.

How I made it:

I used the paint program on my computer to crop the pictures and add the point values. (Sammy got to be 100 since it was his present, and then I just went in reverse order. Peter suggested that I should have made our birth years the point values—which would have been cool-but significantly shortened the point spread.)

I printed the “wallet size” option, which was perfect for the cards.

I bought two 88 cent packs of playing cards, making sure to get the same pattern backs. I used double-sided tape to attach the pictures. Then I borrowed my friend’s laminator to laminate them. Originally I was just going to use clear packing tape to “laminate” them—and that might have been better, because they are pretty slippery and thicker than regular cards, it took a couple of rounds to get used to holding them.

However, I worried that the packing tape wouldn’t hold up as well.

I also made a birthday chart for my in-laws. They needed one :).

Now I know why most people use vinyl lettering instead of painting. I didn’t sand the board with a smooth enough grit, and the paint bled under the stencil edges pretty badly. So lesson learned: use at least 3 levels (probably more) of sandpaper , and just use vinyl cutouts. I fixed the big letters with a little paint brush. The little letters bled so badly that I gave up on that stencil and just painted the months freehand. They turned out better than I expected.

This board was 3/4″ by 6″ by 28″.