Check our newest game, custom-made for Fall Festival! It's a version of the classic Fish Bowl game, but with mini-cauldrons instead of fish bowls.
This is a great game to DIY! Here's what you need:
One 2x4 pine board, cut in half - plywood would do just as well, though
Primer (water-based) - black or gray, if you can get it, although I used white
Acrylic paints and a couple of acrylic paint markers in black and white
Sandpaper
Good paintbrushes - the kind with the stiff, flat side for the lettering on the sign, and a couple of large varnish brushes like they sell at Home Depot
Some clear varnish or similar product - we used Rustoleum Clear Enamel in a spray can
After sanding, priming, and sanding again, I used a marbling technique to get a cracked, burned stone effect for the bottom part of the game. First I painted it gray, and then squiggled on some acrylic paint in thick black lines and smudged them around by dry-brushing back and forth (with the wood grain) with a large varnish brush. You can even smudge it with a dry towel.
And that's it for the bottom!
The top of the game is painted all black (gray or black primer would have made this a lot easier).
Sign lettering is tricky, but one way to do it is by printing the letters out on paper, then placing the paper over the wood and tracing the letters with a pencil so that it leaves an indent in the wood underneath. Here's a good tutorial.
Here I outlined the letters with a white paint marker first. Later, I filled them in with orange paint, and then used a black paint marker, along with the white marker again, to clean up all the edges.
Then I painted the stones. Check out this video on how to paint stones, by our favorite Art Sherpa.
To make the game easy to carry, I added hinges to the bottom so that it folds flat.
Then I added a few coats of Rustoleum Clear Enamel to help protect the paint.
Since the ping pong balls for this kind of game have a tendency to bounce a lot and end up on the floor (where they bounce even more, which means the poor volunteer running the game has to chase them all down) I added some creepy black cloth to the sides to trap the balls and prevent them from rolling off the sides of the game.
The finished product was very popular at Fall Festival!
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