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.
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.
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 *.
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 *.
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.
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
