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BOREDOM BUSTERS
The inspiration for this DIY came as a way to ease the boredom of lockdown 3.0. After almost a year of lockdowns, it is difficult to find alternative things to do, especially ones which don’t revolve around a screen to fill the long days and evenings stuck at home. I’m hoping this DIY could be one you recreate if you are in a couple or to help give you some different things to do if you too are stuck at home.
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This DIY started with research online to compile my list of date night ideas. I cannot take credit for all the ideas as I used multiple websites and my own ideas interleaved within the list.
I had 32 lollipop sticks and 4 categories, leaving 8 sticks for each category. To make best use of the limited number of sticks, I decided to use both sides of them. More detail on how I intend to use these sticks later on.
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The lollipop sticks I had in the house were ripe for renovation as they had quite dark pen writing on them. In order to cover this up, I tried a variety of different strategies with varying degrees of success. I am going to share with you what worked and * what I wish I’d known before I started *.
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These were the paints I had access to to use for this project. * I wish I’d known these paints don’t give a huge amount of coverage, especially to cover the wood or dark coloured pen *. After painting 2 layers of the paint, it wasn’t covering particularly evenly so I decided to sand the sticks down. * I wish I’d sanded them off before I started painting *.
When the pen wasn’t covering properly, I decided to paint a layer of primer over to top to see if that would help. * I wish I’d known not to bother with this step as the primer didn’t cover the pen and I ended up sanding it all back off *.
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Eventually, I decided to mix the Mala paint with some white acrylic paint I had bought separately from Hobbycraft. This helped to thicken up the paint enough to cover the dark pen and with 2 – 3 layers of this on each side, giving me the desired effect.
After leaving the sticks to dry overnight, the next day I was able to put one activity on each side of the sticks- I used a standard black biro for this. I put an ‘H’ at the top on one side, and a ‘T’ at the top of the other side. When deciding which activity to complete we will flip a coin- ‘Heads’ or ‘Tails’.
Once labelled, I sealed each side of the lollipop sticks with 2 coats of the ‘Mod Podge Gloss Waterbase Sealer’, letting each one dry between coats.
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I then put the sticks in a spare mason jar I found in the house, and created the label for the front attached to the inside with glue dots.
The way I intend to use this is:
- Decide which category we would like to choose an activity from.
- Randomly pick one of the sticks from the jar of that colour.
- Flip a coin ‘Heads’, we complete the activity on that side of the stick / ‘Tails’, we complete the activity on that side of the stick.
I am hoping we will get lots of use out of this both during lockdown and after. Even some of the ‘going out’ activites can be completed at home a the moment- especially with museums and galleries providing online experiences for people. Alternatively, I could have skipped the whole process and put these same ideas into a random activity generator or on slips of paper!
Thank you for making it to the end of this blog post, I hope you enjoy making these for yourself and it provides a little inspiration for things to do when you’re struggling with inspiration. Please engage with me by leaving a comment, liking or sharing the joy with someone else. Talk soon, Ellie x