Back in the day I decided to make a Christmas tree with a geek theme for my husband. So I painstakingly made a whole load of Angry Birds baubles complete with little santa hats. It now has pride of place in Mike’s office at work and gets great comments every year.
(sorry for the dodgy picture, this really was from back in the day, taken with a terrible iPod camera!)
This year we decided not only to make a geeky Christmas tree, but to make it boardgame themed too. What to choose though? We have a ton of games! We decided on Richard Gardfield’s King of New York – a game where you play as a monster to attack and smash each other along with the island of Manhattan by rolling dice and playing special cards. Great fun!
It was great fun to source all the pieces and make them up. It took all year, about one every other month! I made a bauble to represent each monster you can play as in the game.
(in the background, tucked into the games, you can see our cheeky little elfs, Tinsel Bottom and McCringle along with their reindeer friend Bananas, they have been keeping our games room festive this year!)
Drakonis:
Drakonis was made from felt and pipe-cleaners. I just cut out each part and sewed it all together with a sequin for the eye. I did like how the pipe-cleaner claws turned out.
Kong:
Kong is made from an old bauble covered in a fluffy wool and a painted face. Easy peasy. I did learn from my Angry Birds tree though – the bauble was painted white with base paint first so the silver colour would not show through the painted face.
Mantis:
Mantis was a bit of a pain. Again I started with an old bauble and painted it plain green. I then made the other parts out of clay and glue-gunned them into place. I was so careful with this guy, his antennae are very fragile. He lasted so well for around 3 months then I put him on the tree and ‘snap’ – grrrr. Ah well, a bit of blue tack later and you would never know one of the antennae fell off!
Sheriff:
Sheriff is a dinosaur I found in Home Sense. Not strictly a T-Rex but close enough! I made his cowboy had and little sheriff badge from Fimo.
Rob:
Rob is made from an old robot bauble that were all the rage last year, sequins and a bit of crochet work! Then I applied liberal amounts of glue to keep it all in place.
Captain Fish:
Captain Fish is my favorite, along with being the biggest pain to make. I made a wonderful little Fimo whale, complete with a natty ‘Captain’s Hat’ and painted it all up. For some reason, the paint just would not dry, so to this day he is sticky to the touch and has my fingerprints all over him! It’s cool though, makes him look like a ‘wet’ fish. He is anchored to the bauble with a piece of string, so actually ‘floats’ and moves around inside his empty bauble, which I thought was a stroke of genius, even if I do say so myself 🙂
Some more close ups – I am proud of these baubles:
For comparison, here is a piccie of the character tokens used in the game King of New York:
We have stumbled across one problem with such awesome decorations for our games room, we don’t really have any festive games to play!! Do you have any recommendations for us? Let us know on social media or in the comments below, we would love to add to our collection of 12 Days and Hey, That’s My Fish!
Board Game Geek link: King Of New York
Publisher Link: Iello
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