DIY Family Match Game

Well, I've been on the road a lot for work lately so I've kind of been taking it easy with my craft projects over the past couple of weeks.  They were pretty easy peasy.  But this week, I was home all week, so I have no excuses.  So, I decided I get back into a project that required a bit more creativity, forethought, and actual work.  I'm so happy with the result that I think it was well worth it.

Here's the thing...I have no less than 5 birthdays to prepare for this month, three of them for kids.  I wanted to make something special instead of just giving them all another toy to add to each of their insanely huge stashes of toys they all already have.  So, I came up with this family match game:

I've sort of made this up as I went along so I don't have my usual photo of supplies but here's a list of what you need:
-paper
-photos of family
-scissors (or a cutting machine)
-glue
-laminating pouches and a laminator

Steps:
1) First, I let my Silhouette machine do all the work for me after I designed a shape to use for my cards.

2) Then I used my Silhouette again to cut my digital photos of family members to exactly the right size to fit inside each of the shapes.

3) I printed out two copies of each face and enough card shapes to do a front and a back for each of the faces.

4) Then I sandwiched everything together, adding a little glue to secure everything before I put it in the laminator.

5) I laminated all of my shapes with pictures on them, making sure to leave enough space in between each one so that I could cut around the shapes and leave them sealed by the laminator.

6)Then I had to cut out all of the circles.  I went old school on this step and used a blade and a hard plastic template, which I didn't mention in my list of supplies because that's totally not necessary.  You could just freehand it with scissors, but I was pretty sure I'd mess it up if I went that way.

And that's it!  When I was done I had a nice little stack of cards that were all pretty much exactly the same size and shape.

I wanted to use more goofy photos of everyone but I ran out of time and had to use what I had on hand.   You don't have to use family pictures.  You could use it as a learning game or just put all of the Thomas the Train characters on your cards (I have no idea how my nephew can keep all of those trains straight!).

I'm assuming you all understand the goal of this game...it's pretty simple.  Just turn all of the cards face down after you've mixed them up and then try to match them up by memory.  I'm such a nerd, my cousin and I used to play this game for hours when I was a kid, and I actually loved every minute of it.  I wish I would've had these cards instead of plain old playing cards though~

If you don't have a cutting machine, don't write this project off.  If you use simple squares or maybe even pre-cut shapes from the craft store you can still do this with minimal cutting time.

I think the kids will enjoy this.  And I can add more photos and cards as I collect more pictures.

What do you think?  Do you have other ideas of easy to make fun kids birthday presents????  I'm also making some tattoo's and personalized T-Shirts with iron-ons, I'll show them to you next week.  After this weekend, I'll have two parties down and only three more to go~

By the way....It's CANADA DAY here in Canada....HAPPY CANADA DAY everyone!!!!!