Craft a Checkerboard

My oldest son loves playing games. We’ve introduced him to Chutes and Ladders, Candy Land, Memory, and even play a very basic version of Parcheesi with him. He’s been asking to play checkers, so I thought it would be fun to teach him on a special checkerboard!

Making a checkerboard turned out to be much easier than I thought it would be! Here is what I used:
Black Foamcore (a piece at least 13.5″ by 13.5″)
Core’dinations Cardstock in orange, purple, and green
1 1/4″ wooden disks (you need 24, but make extras just in case some get lost)
Black paint
1″ scallop punch
Glue Dots
Paper Cutter
Ruler
Pencil
Craft Knife
Glue Stick

I started by making my Checkerboard pieces, I painted the disks on all sides, punched scallops from my green and purple Core’dinations cardstock, and attached the scallops to the disks. Half the disks got purple scallops, half got green.

Since my wooden disks were 1 1/4″ in diameter, I wanted the squares on my board to be 1 1/2″. I drew lines on my foamcore to mark the layout – each line is 1 1/2 inches from the one next to it on all sides. I cut 32 squares out of the orange cardstock – each 1 1/2″ square.

I used a glue stick to secure the squares. I love using the Core’dinations cardstock for projects like this where the sides of the paper are visible, especially against a dark background. With other scrapbook papers, you see the white edge where the paper was cut. These Core’dinations papers have color all the way through, so there is no ugly white line! Yay!

Once all my squares were secure, and after I had erased any stray pencil marks, I trimmed my foamcore, giving my checkerboard a 1/4″ border.

I waited to do this last for two reasons. The first was just in case I mis-measured or my squares didn’t line up perfectly, trimming it last ensured that all my borders would still be the same size. The second was to protect the edges. If I dropped or banged the board while making it, I’d still have beautiful, crisp edges on my finished project!