Coloring page- chess board

 

Oh it's been a while. Sorry. This has been a good summer for my garden and I've been spending a lot of time out there. 

Anyway, here's a new coloring page. The big blank spot at the bottom of the chess board is so it can be personalized as you wish as a sign for a bedroom or whatever you'd like to do with it. 

Click the images below for larger versions to print and color. 

Chess board coloring page small jpg version:

Chess board coloring page large transparent png version:

Chess Piece mandala coloring page

At one point, probably about 7 years ago, I was working on a dingbat font with chess figures. It never got finished and the project was shelved, but these designs from from what I had done on that font. I hope you enjoy the mandala! Click on the image for a larger version.

Geek stuff

Just throwing a couple things up here. The first is a template in 300 ppi that fits a Nintendo DS. I used sticker paper with it and created a Pokeball to cover the scratches on my son's DS. Plain paper covered with packing tape would work too since it's size to have a bit of a border space around it. The blank template is in PNG format.

The other thing is blank game tokens. Why? My son is designing a board game that looks very complicated. While he's in the process of testing and designing, these will give him something inexpensive to use as game tokens that he can also write a quick note on them. To use them, you cut out the circle, fold it half and glue it, then cut a notch where the black line is. I cut a narrow V shape out. Then cut out the token parts, fold it in half and cut the corresponding notches. You can glue this or not before cutting the notches, I left his unglued so he can easily re-fold them so the blank side is out for extra notes. I'm really not sure if these will come in handy for anyone else, but if you can use them, do! Lined, unlined and half lined, these are 300 ppi gifs and print out to be about 1 inch at the base, and 1.5 inches tall.

Ideas, links and thoughts

I finally made up an Amazon.com Listmania list of some of my favorite cooking and craft related free books for the Kindle, they are all in public domain and all available on Project Gutenbergas well. Here's my list.

I was reading KissThisGuy.com this weekend, actually I was singing it to my family, looking up favorite songs. I realized, that would make the BEST party game. Go there, find songs, and make little slips of paper with the misheard lyric, the actual lyric, song and artist. Fold slips in half and put them into a bowl and let your guests take turns taking out slips and singing the misheard lyric. Prizes for the people who guess the most right songs and artists, and for the people who perform the best so the songs are recognized.
*singing to Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody* Scare a Moose, Scare a Moose, Will you do the fan tango?
Dr. Kiki used to do a podcast called Food Science that was one of our favorites. We would hook up the iPod to the tv and watch it together. The episode with nitrogen frozen ice cream was one of E's favorites. We've made ice cream using the two canister method before, and I actually do have an ice cream maker. But I think next time we are going to try this dry ice method. It looks like a lot of fun. Dry ice can also be used to carbonate soft drinks using this method. We usually use yeast. It does create a slight alcohol  content in the beverage, but not enough to worry about.

Also Spoonflower is selling people's designs if they wish now, which means I can make some of my patterns there available for sale if there is any interest. You can see the designs here. I have them in vector format so I can resize and recolor fairly easily. What do you think?

Blank Tic Tac Toe Templates

You'll want to decorate one board, and 2 sets of the game pieces to create a tic tac toe game. Maybe personalized sets with pictures of your kids? Or favorite good/evil characters from shows they like?
You can see an example of a completed set here

Pirates vs. Ninjas Tic Tac Toe

I was planning to do a pirates vs. ninja checkers set, but decided to start small with a tic tac toe set. The pieces are 1.75 inches, and the board is 7 inches. I'll do the checker board set I think, with smaller pieces. I like how this turned out. The art is my own, the font I used is Selfish by Misprinted Type. It's one of several great freeware fonts on the site, and there are some nice commercial fonts as well.

To make it, print out all 3 pages on card stock. I always seal my printables with a quick spray of a clear coat. Score the folds then cut out. Glue the game pieces by folding to match the diagram on the sheet.If you print it out at 200 dpi in a graphics program, you'll make a smaller set which I think would be awfully cute as well.The board is just folded and glued like a very shallow box. Next post will be the blank templates to decorate how you'd like. Click on the images for the full sized versions.