Crafty Beats

I had been collecting the same type of lids for a few months last year since I started to consider a board game project. Although there are so many choices, I ended up with the simplest one. *blush* Here comes a brief tutorial for how to make and play the game. There are various online version of this game (Hatch and Match).

Making:

1. Collect a certain number of bottle lids/caps/small yogurt cups or whatever container fits the size you want. The container should not be transparent. (Mine are lids of milk we consume everyday)

2. Use one of the container to make a template for the pictures. (I used a 10 cent coin as my template.)

3. Decide what you want to put inside the container. Here are some choices:

a. Comic books, old magazines or even grocery store flyers
b. Emoticons, logos or whatever picture you can find online and print out
c. Alphabets, numbers, which may only be interesting for small kids
d. Colorful stickers.
e. Stamps. You can carve your own stamps.
f. Some miniature toys that can fit into your container
I used Calvin and Hobbes, some emoticons and Tuzki.

4. Print out the pictures you want to use. Make sure:

a. The pictures should fit into the container
b. There should be two identical copies of each picture.
To make the game more complicated, you may need more copies of the same picture

5. Use the template made in 2. as guide to cut out the pictures.

6. Glue the pictures inside the container to keep all these lids.

7. You may want a larger container to keep all the lids. I used a small tin can.

Done.

Playing:

1 player: Arrange the containers with the pictures up in whatever way you like. Look at the pictures and memorize the matching pairs. Flip over all the containers. You can flip two containers at a time. If the two are not matching, you need to flip them again. The game is over when all the containers are in the original situation (the pictures are visible).

2 players: Start with the picture side down. Remove one container randomly without looking inside. Divide the remaining containers into two sets for the players. One set consists one more than the other. The players can look into the containers they own and remove all the matching pairs. And then, for each turn, each player can pick one from the opponent. The player who can remove all his/her containers wins.

2+ players: Start with the picture side down, so you don’t have any knowledge of the matching pairs. Each player can flip over two containers at a time. The player can keep them if they are matching together. The player with more containers wins.

For those who also like collecting bottle lids, don’t miss Lidmen.com, an interesting Australian website of many toys made from bottle lids.  My favorite is the cute zebra.