This year I wasn’t on the mood for Easter celebrations. If it wasn’t for the girls I think I would have ignore it, but Mafalda insisted on making gifts for family and little by little there she ended up convincing me.
After a long period of indecision about what to do they eventually choose a game of checkers. Very fast and simple to make, and almost without my intervention .
To make the board we used canvas and the squares were made with adhesive tape. It can be done in two ways and I think both ways are ok. The first way is to make a grid with the adhesive tape, we made it 5cm squares (the width of the adhesive tape), then we paint and let dry, remove the tape and glue more tape over the painted squares to make the remaining part of the grid and then paint again. This method forces you to do the painting twice which can be good if it’s only one child painting this way doesn’t get bored so quickly .
In the second way you glue 7 lines of adhesive tape and with a ruler and X- Act cut perpendicular columns over the tape with the same width. In this version the mother has more immediate work because you have to remove the tape squares to construct the grid. But it has the great advantage that it’s ready to paint and then dry and take the rest of the tape out and then cut the margin and it’s ready. I used a zig- zag scissors to prevent fray, but you can use white glue, as also gonna use for the game pieces.
We made 4 checkers games and the girls were entirely responsible for the choice of colors. The boards are made with 7 rows and 7 columns .
The pieces can be made in many ways using materials you have home. You can use metal coffee capsules, plastic bottle caps, and so on. We used felt and old buttons and glue the buttons with white glue on the felt. Each player has 12 pieces, so the full game has 24 pieces of two different colors . We use different colors in the pieces but always chose white buttons and dark blue or black buttons , to keep the white and black pieces .
But there was still a gift we did not want it to be the game of checkers. And if you think the drawings of children do not make good gifts you are sadly mistaken. A drawing in a frame looks completely different, and if you change slightly the materials then it becomes even more special. They draw on a piece of canvas I cut with the same size of the frame I wanted and then they draw with Giotto fabric pencils, which are fantastic for these things and that you can use for other crafts with them.
Our gifts were put in baskets made of small wooden boxes (boxes from the strawberries we bought for jam). In addition to these gifts our baskets also had orange cake, coconut cake or lemon and coconut cookies, chocolate bunnies and chocolate eggs and gums we made at home.
And this time it was their turn to make my Easter special. Thank you my precious girls!
