Make a 'Taylor Swift Monopoly-like' board game

Love's a game, wanna play? 💘 Your daughters will love this Taylor Swift-inspired craft! 🎤

When someone like Taylor Swift flies into your town, exciting just doesn’t cover it.

If you’re a fan but missed out on tickets to her Eras tour, you can still celebrate your own little Swifty party. 

Start with making a DIY board game that is loosely based on the set up and playing style of a certain one invented by the Parker Brothers ([cough] Monopoly). 

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What you need

• Cardboard, colour paper, wrapping paper
• Glue: roll-on or craft
• Washi tape
• Pencils, chalk, pens, paint
• Ruler 
• Paper cutting tools
• Optional: Computer and printer
• 2 dice (borrow from another board game)

Note: Adult participation is advised when using sharp tools (E.g., art knife). 

Image: Supplied

Activity

Building the square base

Cut four pieces of cardboard, 25 cm length x 25.4 cm width. Cut out a long strip of cardboard with a narrow width of 8 mm.

Apply glue to the back of a large sheet of wrapping paper. Press the cardboard cut outs to the glued wrapping paper: Place the strip horizontally in the middle; Place two squares above and two squares below the strip.

Glue and fold over the excess wrapping paper along the edges of the cardboard base. Angle fold and trim the corner joins of the base.

Creating the board game design

Cut out a poster sheet, 49.5 cm square.

Rule a four-sided frame along the edge, 7 cm width. Between the corner squares, rule vertical lines that are 4 cm apart. Altogether there are four square corner tiles and thirty-six rectangle tiles.

Write identifying details on each of the tiles. E.g., starting square (Receive a Grammy and 200 diamonds), property (Titles of Taylor Swift’s songs), utilities and services (stations and concert tours), jail (exile), taxes (record label), etc.

Add Washi tape tabs to the top of the property tiles.

Decorate the centre square space within the frame, using any colour medium you’d like. You could even add photos, illustrations and stickers to match the theme (Taylor Swift) of your board game.

Creating player cards, game currency and tokens

If you have access to a computer and printer you can easily draw up and duplicate player cards, game currency and tokens.

Create player cards on white cardstock. The sort of cards to create can include property (Titles of Taylor’s songs with cat house values, chance, community (Swifty swag), etc. 

Create dollar notes (diamond currency) on paper of different colours.

Cut out the cards and currency. Add Washi tape to the top of the property cards, making sure the colours match the tiles.

Create lots of circular property tokens (cat faces): house (cat house – small token), hotel (cat café – larger token).

You can hand draw and cut out paper playable paper tokens that are on theme with the board game (E.g., banjo, sunnies, kitten, etc.

Joining board to base

Vertically cut up through the wrapping paper base, between lower two squares, and through the gap.

Cut the board game square clean in half. Glue the two halves to the base, lining up with the central, vertical line.

You can now easily fold the board game for easy storage.

For more detailed instructions, watch the video at the top of this story!

Originally published as Make a 'Taylor Swift Monopoly-like' board game