If you don't know what to get your friend a gift for their birthday and you want something heartfelt but you have little money in your pocket, make them their own personalised board game!
For instance, making Cluedo (which is one of the best ones because you can make funny death cards and rooms based on places you've been).
What you need:
A big piece of cardboard
Colour pens
A printer, computer and camera (if you want to use photos of your friends)
A ruler (unless you want to use something else as a substitute or like very crooked lines on your game of Cluedo)
An envelope and a box to put everything in
So to start, actually look at a real game of Cluedo, so you know what you're copying. Next think of some funky ways to die, it's your game, it can be anything.
Death by swooning over moviestar
Death by bollywood blow
The next thing you need is to make a giant mess in your living room, cutting up pictures of your friends falling to their deaths. If you need a stencil for card sizes, take an old playing card and trace around it so you get a uniform shape for all of your Cluedo cards. Soon enough you'll have your own bunch of "killer" cards, for your murder weapon cards it's usually best to draw your own because some of the wackier things you may choose to have (I doubt that anyone would be able to find something like a purple cow).
Messy Workers
Next what you need are your movable pieces that can jump around the board in place for you. If you already have pieces that you want to get rid of that works best, but otherwise you can either find or make little nick-knacks.
Chicken player pieces
Around about now is the time for a snack. Make sure you have something filled with sugar to keep you going for the rest of the day, because this may take a while still.
Sugar rush to keep you going
Now you need to draw out your map on your big piece of cardboard. Faintly draw out your grid first, so that you have guidelines as to where to put your buildings. As a hint, make sure you draw up a plan beforehand on a piece of scrap paper so that you don't have to constantly rub out lines.
Cluedo map
While you're doing this get a friend who's not doing something, or who is jittery off snack food to create some place cards by either having photos of them or drawing them yourself! Your map can be about places that you've been to or creative crazy places that you like, such as amusement parks or fireworks factories.
Once you've finished drawing in your map, you can start to colour it in whilst tired friends decide it's time for more sugary snacks.
Colouring in for grown ups
Nommy snack time
Finally last but certainly not least, you need a cool logo and slogan for your game placed on a nice clean envelope to keep all your cards and pieces in.
Self made logo
So at long last, a lot of hours, lot of sugary snacks and hard work later, you have your very own personalised Cluedo game! Enjoy!
